The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-09-13

Ruffles" is a row of the chorus ballet
with their gowns off. That reads wick
eder than the exhibition is: for the
girls chemises and hosiery cover them
as much as evening dresses would: yet
their corsets, brought from privacy into
publicity. and showing the>- utility of
that article of the feminine toilet for
both repression and expansion. seem to
promise further piquancy at the cost of
modesty. Immediately ensuing relays
of girls in a New York emporium of
fashion," however. add to and embel-
fish their clothing until the stage is
crowded like violently shaken. kalei-
doscope, with colors and shapes in gay
commotion. 1t is not until the further
end of the play that anything else in
decorous in raiment is exhibited: and
even then II is less a matter of gar
ments than the swishing of them. AT
this time. the scene has shifted to a
restaurant in Paris, where the eating
runs into drinking. and the wine goes
down into the guests feet as we'll as up
to their heads. A dozen of the taller
girls dance wildly in sheath gowns with
slit skirts: and SO a riot of Bacchus
becomes something like an orgy of
Eros. These two are the only and not
fragrant lapses in Fluffy Ruffies'' from
the decorum of 1.-THE Girls of Gotten
berg" Thus the first two autumn ex-
travaganZas are free from the shame
that characterized some of the sum-
mer shows. and promises Clearly at
Effectiveness for the winter. -
x X X
Hattie Williams is the actress for
whom the newspaper cartoon creature.
Fluffy Ruffles, was chosen as a role for
the new season. The job of turning
Fluffy into a heroine for Hattie, no
matter how nonsensical. required char
acterization by playwright, and vivi-
fication by the actress of girl exist
ing in mute pictures only. So she has
been made an industrious getter and
unfortunate loser of employment, be-
ginning in the New York emporium of
fashion, where she is seen first in the
Familiarity fluffed and ruffled guise. She
is such a fascinator of men that, by
the ardor of their wooing. they drive
her from New York to London. and
thence to Paris, in quest of work
wherein her charm may be potent for
trade but not incitive TO deviltry. Hat
tie Williams personality is wholesome;
she is frolicsome without sensuality:
and so this scheme of turning Fluffy
Ruffles to stage account makes frank
fun where, say, an Anna Held would
be equivocal. An example of Hattie
effectuality of comicality without SEN
sualism is when a mass meeting of
London suffraget is staged with the
detailed care of a Henry Irving or
Lawrence Barrett mob in Julius Gaze
sar" Hattie is the principal speaker
for women's rights, and the fun of the
affair lies in her selection of a most in
nocent man in the throng against
whom to hurl her accusations of mems
iniquities. AS he slowly comprehends
that he Is the Patsy Bolivar of the oc-
casion, and as the mass of men and
women becomes mob to menace him,
his distress makes entirely new stage
merriment. and unpromising material
develops merry value. This effectual-
ity is due as much to the junior George
Grossmith as to Miss Williams. That
comedian, brought over to play an
English dandy. is the only foreigner in
the company.
OF all the writers of New York slang
for the stage, not excepting AIDE, CO.
han, Forbers and Hobart, none has
been SO originative as John ]. McNally
in Fluffy Ruffles" Not a sentence
spoken by Noggie Noggles, and he does
a deal of talking. too. is good diction:
all of it is aptly expressive colloquial-
ism; yet from beginning to END not one
phrase OF ola sang is neard, Tor all OF
il is original. AS a fresh supply of IA
miliar quotations for New York.
Fluffy" beats the London record of
Hamlet" This stuff. as delivered by
a Bert Leslie. enables him to stand
next up to the star actress in success.
Among the listeners on the opening
night were such facile utterers of slang
as Nat Goodwin. Willie Collier and
Tommy Ross. besides experts from
vaudeville. I wondered if there was
any envy under their laughter. Jeal-
ousy isn't quite extinct among actors.
X - X
Margaret Ellington, Mary Mannering
and Lillian Russell can't have more
than paragraph apiece, because they
have taken their new plays on tours
before beginning here this week. Mrs.
Ellington Frohman isn't to be felicitat-
ed professionally without reserve for