Los Angeles herald., 1908-02-26
THE CAST
BY sIDLE LAWRENCE

j Mary ,............ Miss Dolly Bernard
| Tourists, members of the Alpine club, ETC.
BY SIDLE LAWRENCE
II ATRONS of the Belasco this week
| will see a farce comedy of UNI
Il deniable hilarity but no very
obvious originality, finely acted and
excellently staged. The piece is The
Mountain Climber" first presented in
| this country by Francis Wilson. IL
is an adaptation from the German OF
| c. Kraatz and M. Neal. Who the
adapter is does not appear, but ne is
| evidently an Englishman. AT least
there are illusions in the play which
seem somewhat obscure to an Amer
lean audience, but which in England
probably could be counted upon for
| hearty laugh. However, the adapter
| has not been too English in his humor;
nor the Teuton too cumbersome. Inc
farce moves briskly, and If its story
| is old and its lines lack wit its Sit
uations are ridiculous enough to atone
| in ample measure for those denclencles.
| The two main ideas upon which The
Mountain Climber is constructed have
each been exploited before in farces
which have attained considerable sue
| cess. Like 1.-THE Man from Mexico"
| the mountain climber goes out for
| time-or rather, for a series of times
and upon each return tells his wife
that he has been climbing hazardous
peaks in the Alps To his wife he
becomes a hero and, as he has no
valet, this hero worship extends
through the entire household OF
course this mountain climber, whose
name by the way, is Montague Sibsey,
is a clumsy liar, and of course he gets
into several temperatures of hot water
before the farce is ended.
The Trouble Begins
The trouble begins in earnest when
his wife, planning a pleasant surprise,
publishes his letters, written ostensibly
from the Swiss Alps but in reality from
Paris. Now Sibsey had carefully
copied the narratives of these epistles
from a book on mountain climbing
written by Arthur Lydbrook, and he
copied it verbatim. That made the
situation somewhat embarrassing,
This idea, you may remember, was
utilized in another farce of German
origin, adapted for the American stage
by the late Augustin DAILY and pre-
scented under the title of ''Seven-Twen-
Wight" In that case the publica-
ton was of love poems which the sup
posed author had cribbed from the
poets wherever he could find one that
struck his fancy.
In 1.-THE Mountain Climber" Sibsey,
in an effort to 'save his face" goes to
Switzerland in reality, taking his fam
lily with him. There he meets Lyd-
brook and is ever upon the brink of
exposure, though he never quite topples
over it. The Swiss experience comes
in the second act, the best of the three.
The scene is in the mountains, with a
chalet-that's a sort of mountain road
house, not fabric for summer frocks
lat the right and snowy peaks loom
ing above the trees The stage setting
is picturesque and so are the predica-
ments in which Sibsey here finds him.
SELF
Lies Thick and Fast
He lies his way out of one scrape in
to another, but he is never quite
caught: and in the end he makes his
family believe that he has really as
cended an hitherto unconquered peak,
Lydbrook acquiescing in the lie be-
cause of his love for one of Sibsey's
stepdaughters.
In farces of this order the fun con-
sists entirely in the mock anguish or
the victim of his own mendacity. The
clumsier the lie and the narrower the
liars escape from exposure the funner
is the episode-always promising that
credulity is not strained past the farci-
cal breaking point.
The Belasco company gives a finely
humorous presentation of this story.
liar, and his squirmings to eXtricate
himself from difficulties kept last
II nights audience in constant good
humor and frequent laughter. The
farce, really, is one part play, the
other characters serving merely as
"feeders" to Sibsey. However. the
roles of the two Swiss guides offer OPP
portunities for clever work. and both
William Yerance and Richard Vivian
played them excellently. Miss Eleanor
Carey is the worshiping wife;
Miss Florence Smythe and Miss Kath-
arine Emmett, Sibsey's stepdaughters,
and Lewis S. Stone and Charles Rug
giles. the young men in love with the
girls. Miss Adele harrington has the
role of Lena, a Swiss maid, which she
plays with her accustomed skill and in
very fetching male attire.
If you go to the Belasco this week
Mr.. Barnum, as Sibsey, will bring
tears to your eyes, and they won't be
tears of sympathy either.
Through an error of the types the
signature of Side Lawrence was trans
posed in The Herald yesterday from the
review of Coming Through the Rye"
| which he wrote, to the review of
"Eagle Tavern" which he did not write.
The Coming Thro' the Rye" article
was a rather severe criticism of that
production and as Mr.. Lawrence has no
desire to shirk responsibility for the
opinions expressed this correction is
made.t
WOMAN CONTESTS HER