The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-04

New York. Oct. H.-"Father and Son" ia the title of one of the weeks new plays; another. Master" might well be called Mother and Son." third 'Tha Offenders" has for a subject the protection of children against parent. al neglect; Q fourth. Mile, Miscniet: has a principal character who is shIftinRiy a real daughter and pretended son: and 'The Fighting Hope" described last Sunday. sets forth 6 mothers desperate endeavor to save her boys from their lathers iRnominy. Isn't that a batch or co" incidence? Yet the i've bear no fur ther resemblance than to treat Of pa- rentage and progeny.
 It ia true of 'MatoT." too. that it Is whimsically. freakishly. wildly diff ferent from any previously acted play whatever. so far as I know or have been able to ascertain. Steele MackaYe was eccentric in New York's theatrical anairs third of a century ago. He was an actor who had studied the then ceiebated Delsarte's system of dramatic expression. brought 1t here from Paris and taught it in a school of acting. When he personally applied 1t to several roles at WaIlack's though it failed to prosper him much. He next struck out as an author, but his forgotten "AIl For Her" was admittedly para phase of Dickens "A Tale Of Two Cities" and his remembered Hazel KirIsr' was a plagiarism from an old English piece, The Willow Copse. He had more original coneeits ensuInEly as a manager, for he built one theatre with 8 two-story stage, so as to avoid delays betwaen acts-forgettinR that most plays arc SO constructed that the actresses re-
 Aur fnoy vyhiNh fn change their clothes; and his second theatre had an ornate structure to be let down from above to occupy the front quarter of the stage. with band of musicians in it. to while away the
 waiting time with brief concerts not taking into account the heavy cost of this stupendnus entertainment Those two houses have been demoi- ishei lately, and few who stopped to look at the places of A. M Palmer,s and Daniel Frohmaa's early enfea- vors recalled the lGnk dircarded two- story stage and orchestral elevator Steele Markaye was a companion gen" ins with Dion Baucicault in the last third of the nineteenth century.
 Shouldn't a son of such steele Mackaye be worth while in something literary or artistic7 Why. yes; and he is a poet whose. verses. if written when American good poetry was scarce, might have qualified him for A panel in our Temple of Fame. up there on the Hudson In the neiRhhor- hood of Grants Tomb. Thus much of fanfare for the entrance of Percy Msckave. author of Mater" Henry Miller. who for long while was a coming actor. but never came. Is now manager who hSs rung the bulls eve bell several times by producing peculiar plays triumphantly: yet he got the newspaper critics away from inc iron -iawed cvnics of openin 2 nights in New York. and sat them down of an afternoon among soft iinped people. to make their esti- s,ate oF Q play so queer that a moth CT at forty is so fresh In it ,Sn; and ,ns nsrent is taken to be the offspring. Tba whole scheme of the fiction rests on a premise 30 preposterous as that WinJ YOU. too. neither the time nor the place Is far away. but right here and now in an American city. Michael a1as dsn' darkiy brunette and utterly duiI-to-reason reformers in society