The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-01-06
THEATRICAL LETTER ! FROM FRANKLIN FYLES

New York Jan. 1.-Two wholly far cicaI plays that whirled into New York on New Years eve had realistic effects that they didn't need. The storm at sea that is the most remark able sight in ''Brewster's Millions, and the sudden shower in Caught fin the Rain" are among the most widely dis cussed of recent stage spectacles; yet they contribute nothing to the fun of the plays in which they figure, and the former and more extraordinary tllu- sion might be said to rather stem the tide of merriment. It took five au- thors and as many more intimately in- terested advisers to make a play out of the vastly popular novel of Brew ster's Millions" Merrick Thompson saw at first reading of George Barr McCutcheon's story of man who had to spend every cent of a million dol lars in one year in order to inherit seven times that sum, an opportunity for an extraordinary presentation Of yacht in a storm, and set to work to build a play around it. Finding that little out of his line, he employed a well-known American dramatist to do the job, and though his name does not figure on the program it Is fair to as- sume that some of his work appears on the stage. The making of the farce is credited wholly to Winchen Smith and Byron Ongley, rather inconspicu- ous actors who are new at play-writ- ing. Just how much of the piece Is theirs is not so much to the point as the fact that any share in the making of a play so merrily diverting is cred itable.
 The farce that the storm at sea in- terrupts just at the moment when its novel scheme seems likely to become tedious from repetition, exhausts every possible twist to the reckless spend ing of a million dollars. and. with its sole deliberate purpose of causing laughter incidentally satarizes the frenzied finance spirit of the age. And with all it's wild extravaganza of idea it maintains a semblance of plausibil- ity. That is one of the good reasons why the play is destined to prolonged popularity. When the whimsical prop osition of spending a million dollars in a year, in order to inherit seven more, is made to a young man who is then celebrating his first good fortune with house warming party, he scons at 1t. But sort of plausibility Is given to the condition in the second will and sentimental reason to his compliance with 1t by the explanation that the first money comes from a grandfather, who denied its aid to the young mans needy mother before her pttiful death; while the seven millions come from recently enriched uncle, who resented the dead old mans hardness to his daughter, and requires that none or his money shall benefit that poor wo- mans son.
 How "The Road ts Yesterday" got on the stage, I don't know and cannot imagine, for dream plays are under managers taboo, women are disfaVored as dramatists, and the subject of this work is its heroine's nightmare, while its writers, programmed as B. M. DIX and E. G. Sutherland, have Beulah and Evelyn for first names. These angels have rushed in where male mortals fear to tread, and made a drama on metempsychosis. An American girl, tired out by a day of sightseeing among London's antiquities, and in the even ing one of an assemblage in an artists studio where medieval costumes and armor are on view, talks about that old psychological vagary, the transmit grafton and reincarnation of souls. She is in a psychic state of nerves; ana of pain in the stomach, too, for she has eaten unduly of Cheshire cheese. She tfancies vaguely that some trivial new happenings are duplicates of old ones-that she has seen and heard the same things in other circumstances- you know the weirdly haunting sensa- tion. She takes a narcotic. lies down for an hours nap and dreams herself back along "the road to yesterday" until her soul is in the body which it occupied three centuries ago.
 Ton perceive. don't you, that The