The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-11-22

New York. Nov. 20.---Three women are doing odd new things at the the- atre this week. Mrs. Fiske. most whimsically intellectual of our famed actresses. starts in salvation Nell'' as a scrubwomah in a groggery. Miss Duncan, the artistic progenitor of the hundreds of barelegged dancers, makes use of a grand opera for the music and the esteemed Damrosch symphony or chestra for the musicians, in a new display of her denuded grace Mrs. Fugi-Ko illustrates sirenic Japanese pantomime lin The Vampire Cat" Thus we see ancient Grecian and Asi- attic poetry of motion in modern re- production. along with a dramatic study of slum woman in New York. today.
 Mrs. Fuji-Ko's human vampire cat and Miss Duncan's Grecian woman with no scratching claws in her soft feet. must stand back--for despite their art they are doing stunts-while de- scribe Mrs. Fiskes scrubwornan. dramatic achievement that is high in art though low In material at the out set. Most actresses accustomed to look their best are loath to make them selves ugly slatterns. The usage Is to cut the cheap clothes in jaunty shapes. to preserve the outlines of a neat coif- fure in tousling the hair, to show whito hands and wrists that ought to be chopped red and to never, never dishgure the face. As to Mrs. Fiske--- but first about the stage setting for the initial third of salvation Nell :" It is an fncongruity in. New Yorl's sections of utmost squaior. that peo- pie who lodge and eat in wrebched tenements may lounge and drink In beautiful cafes at an expenditure at the bar of, say. dime per hour. The floor is tiled, the ceiling frescoed, the al lI@ Ina lad rrrtfh h. windows and doors paned with cut glass and the bar resn@ndent with po1- ished woods and ornamental glass ware.
 The groggery in the Her's Kitchen slun1, as shown in this play, might be real as we'll as realistic and the men and women in 1t might be actually the creatures they purport to be. for all the flaws in imitation disoernible un- der bright electric lighting. And of all the characteristic objects, alive or lifeless. none is less like e counterfeit than Mrs. Fiske's Nell. the outcast who cleans the floor that drunkards have fouled. I suppose 1t is she. too. who controls the aspects and activi- ties of the thronging customers: and for fidelity it is photographic and pho- tographic Nor does she shrink from participation in the showing of dread ful depravity in that saloon, although Dn0 lS pdSBtV6 m 1L most or the Itmes Her words here are few, but she speaks them clearly, without the staccato slurring that often mars her elocu- tion. Drunken men and women ca- rouse and fight, swear in their slang, and the revelry is of the coarsest sort. One of the tipsy women is white hair. cd with age. A girl who dashes in, having eluded the police in a raid at a nelghbering bagnio, is a bedizened travesty of . fine lady in a deco1lete toilet from a ball. Jim Platt, drunk en rowdy, enacted in a literal way by Hoibrook Blin, is Nelrs master. She is a fond, congenial, faithful and bru. tally abused companion In a defense of her. however, he kills a 1oafer who scorns her as a scrubber, and that climaxes the portion of the play that is in a Hells Kitchen cafe.
 Nelrs lover goes to prison and Nell Is ready to go to the gutter, but bet ter Impulse takes her to a Salvation Army barrack. Time files eight years between acts and when next the felon and the audience see her she is as good Salvation lass as she looks to be- She has saved herself from sin and shame; is living neatly with her child born of her vicious ignorance, and is working to rescue other women The released wretch tempts her to join him in their old ways of wiclEedness,