The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-11-03

New York, Nov 1.-The best-ex-
pected play of the week here is George
Ade,s funny one, "Artie," but first at
tehtion is demanded by the half-h5ur
Japanese tragedy Of 1.-The Martyr,
because it welters in gore, and looks
ike spot in a battlefield that shrieks
Tor surgical aid. 1t is an exposition of
the Japanese custom of hari-kari.
Maybe you have read that Arnold
DAILY, a young actor, said he was go
ing 70 attempt in New York a Theatre
of Ideas, which would be superior IN
art and letters TO the business in
stage shows, and an intellectual uplift-
er of drama in theatrical America 1t
is singular characteristic of these es-
says in theatrical idealism that the
IDEAS are almost always CHASTITY in one
way or another.
Days program began with 1.-THE
Strikers" at the start of which a
craZed man half-killed a woman. and
at the end of which she completed the
homicide all BY herself. THE Shirk-
ers" was a problem drama of lone
someness, the gist of it being that per-
sons who shirk their duty of living,
ana stink out of life by suicide are cow
ards. Do you see? Four audiences
did. but they didn't go away to tell
that the problem and its calculation
were entertaining; for the house was
100 nearly empty TO warrant a contin-
uance, and that murder play ceased
abruptly. Still, there's the making Of
a drama in that theme. As c. NJ. S.
Mcclellan tackles 1t i'm this tragedetta
man in a London crowd and a man
on bleak English heath are alike
lonesome; and one woman bears the
deadly brunt of both their morbid pre-
dtcdments. The particulars are not
worth giving here. But there is the
subject, if you are a genius-or if you
think you are-for you to write a great
novel or drama with a lonely man in
its center.
About the hari-kari tragedy of "The
Martyr. 1t is spoken by four Jap
anese in their native language. a
summary of the plot is printed in the
playful, and the audience openly reads
1t. That is noteworthy. No modish
New Yorker would confess ignorance
OF French by perusing a synopsis of a
Bernhard play, or of opera in Italian
or German or even of NaZimova in
russian: but it will do to confess in
ability to understand japanese. How
ever, the action of ''The Martyr" is 50
graphic that the purport is as clear as
voiceless pantomime The two male
laps as the recent war in Asia pic
tured to the world in soIdierly arrays.
They were TALL lank fellows, in the
old-time costumes of their country,
with faces ugly as gorillas when in
repose, and frightful as demons when
In agitation. I have seen such faces
on Oriental fans, vases and screens,
and I recall some like them in night
mares; but never hitherto have I seen
them alive.
The two actresses don't match up
with Gilberts flattering travesties of
Toxic girls in THE Mikado" nor with
those posed for Japanese art in cross
legged squats and angle-backed curt
sizes; nor vet have they any of the
quaint pretttness of the Geishas that l
saw at the st. Louis fair. and are com
mon, suppose, in the tea houses Of
Japan. Can it be that the aristocrasic
ladies of Toxic are so much worse off
for good looks than the public dan
seuses? HanakO.- the starred tragedi-
enne of the company enacts a belle
supposed TO be irresistibly charminG;
yet she could be no unsightIier a wo-
man unless her pigmy size were IN
creased to ordinary stature. At the
beginning of the play, she thrums &
mandolin to please her lover, dances
awkwardly on stills. and is clumsily
blithesOme IN antics that make her and
the three others look like decrepit. yet
still tricky monkeys in a cage.
X *
Out of that crude comedy of a young
Japanese girls merriment comes a
tragedy more hideous in realism than
any which Caucasian drama presurnes
10 exhibit Hanako for a joke changes
clothes with her maid servant, and
r.Nr L.
take her for the mistress He is so an
Sered by the substitutes fooling that
he is about TO prick her with his sword.
when the lady's brother, thinking il
is she who is thus mistreated, draws
his blade on the sutton. The actors are
Yamaoka and Yoshikawa. The ugIi-
ness of their faces becomes mobile as
they fight. They are what our actors
call muggers Their grimaces are as
violently expressive of rage and hatred.
murderous hope and terrified dread.
while they clash and thrust with their
long swords. as the masks which Gre
clan actors wore to express greater
frenzies of emotion than was posi-
bic to their bare visages. As the COM
bat proceeds, Yamaoka sIyly streaks
his naked arm with red to look like
a cut, and the spectators shiver Soon.
Yoshikawa claps his hand full of GRIM
son smear TO his hip, and a murmur of
horror runs through the house. Thus
the antagonists wound each other until
both are bloodied thoroughly. Then the
lover gets a stab to the heart. and
writhes to death.
*
Now comes Hanako's demonstration
of Japanese dramatic art in a suicide
by hari-kari; that Is to say, and I
must say it to be descriptive, though ii
may make you finch as you read. she
places the point of a big knife against
her abdomen. slowly forces 1t in among
her vitals and very lingeringly dies. Il
is the japanese aristocrat's privilege.
as you know, to be his own executioner
when sentenced to death, or when his
keen sense of honor calls for self
slaughter; and il is said that, usually,
no sooner does the blade puncture him
that a friend stabs him to the heart,
thus shortening his ordeal. There is
no such elimination of torture in Hapa-
kos hari-kari. Those who see it seem
TO lose sight of the fact that ii is
make-belleve, and to view il as reality