The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-08-09
Dramatic Brainstorms on Broadway

New York. Aug. THAT date doesn't
forecast dramatic brainstorn,s: yet the
week brings three kinds of theatrical
agftations in four new shows. A mu-
steal comedy with no manner of wick
edness IN its singing. dancing or jok-
Ing is singularity in this summer of
outbursting Salomes: negro minstrelsy
with the matter provided by George NJ.
Conan arouses curiosity: and two homi-
cidal melodramas embody strenuous
endeavors to lift gunplays out of last
seasons slump.
The play OF foolery with girls and no
sensual offense is 1.-The Girl Question"
rearranged and replenished after it's
first clothes were worn out in Chicago.
Its now start is in a New York res
taurant Of the Tenderloin at noon, with
the head waiter. Con, charm-boun by
the risky little cashier, Elsie, and in
appreciative OF the worthier waitress.
10; and on later evening Elsie breaks
Cons heart by marrying a rich chap
who will put her on the stage; where
upon 10 sets out TO mend it with her
true love that sticks. Homely senti-
ment is carried along with the fun to
happy conclusion. Con is played by
JUNE McCree, who has gained enough
weight to look like William J. Bryan,
but retains the die-away cadence at the
ends of his sentences. and recalls his
early methods by pretending TO read
topical ditty as he finds ii in a book;
while George Drew Mendum, a niece
of John Drew and cousin of Ethel
Barrymore. gives buxom honesty to 10.
in contrast with the lively coquetry of
Isabel D'Armand's Elsie. the only one
of the three who can sing and dance,
although McCree tries to. However, he
is glib with the newest slang applied
TO subjects of the day. and Jack Hen
derson and Helen Royton are there
with singing voices.
A stageful of singers and dancers
soon break in on the rentaurants love
faffair. They come from a theatre re-
! hearsars intermission for luncheon: and
'eSeir table manners don't prevent them
from making musical chimes of the
glasses and dancing jigs on the tin
platters. 1 imagine that the authors.
Hough and Adams. didn't create these
jOlliers. and that they were born of the
Howard who put in the music. Eight
of the girls stroll tall and languid i'm
sheath gowns that give informatory
views of a fashionable bellies gait;
eight caper small and agile in short
skirts and in none: there are various
displays of others; but nothing that
they do looks indecorous to eyes accus-
nicely without a Salome.
x X X
New Workers who like to sit idle and
pay to be amused go to one circus every
spring. after satiating winter plays,
and to one negro minstrel show every
summer: and after each they are ready
to swear off on that sort of entertain
ment for the rest of their natural lives;
yet next spring and summer they make
their annual visits. The new black
minstrelsy for 1908 couldn't have had
an audience more modish in manner
and clothes if il had assembled for
grand opera. Inside those garments
were as many of the vicious smart set
as of the vacuous smart set-by which
mean men and women who make
their money by hook and crook touched
elbows with men and women whose
money had been hooked and crooked
for them by ancestors; for this was