Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-06-13
The Theaters

N ROBERT MANTELLS Otnello
X gripped the hearts, the con-
AZ seriousness and the nerves of the
Mason audience last night in way
that brought curtain calls after each
act. Los Angeles gloved players
rarely ever reach the heights of en-
thusiasm they did last night, and it
was the feminine applause that fired
the energies of their escorts.
Mantell came and bowed, he brought
Miss Lillian Kingsbury to the curtain
and then Francis McGinn Qago) fol-
lowed deferentially, hut all the applause
failed to evoke speech from the Moor.
Mantells Othello trembles with fiery
passion, with the fury of fancied
wrongs. Attuned to warfare, the
swarthy bridegroom easily succumbed
| to the whispers of SANDER and permit
| ted the poisoned words of Iago to
wreck domestic happiness and smear
his hand with blood.
| Mantell uses the Edwin Booth YER
sion, with the same omissions. The
first act, used by many, in which the
Moor recounts his war deeds in Des-
demonias hearing is left entirely to
narrative 1t Is not part of the Man.
tell play. The clown in Desdemona' s
service is also missing, and Blanca
plays a secondary part in the story
till the death chamber scene demands
of her melodramatic defiance.
In truth sit is soldiers life to have
his balmy slumbers walked witt
strife" It was a stirring wooing, a
heart stirring denouement. From the
moment Brabantio, Desdemona's
| father, refused to believe that his
daughter fell in love with the man she
feared to look on and applied a
| fathers invective to Othello till the
| fatal moment when Othello discovers
| the perfidy that made him an uxorl-
eide, Mantell illustrates the gamut OF
human pathos and jealousy. His rlch
plant voice is pitched to every mood.
Miss Kingsbury was delicately re-
pressed in her wifeliness; gentle,
obedient and proud in her knowledge
of guiltlessness. Her Desdemona was
womanly and maidenly. AS the final
tragedy drew near and she begged her
crazed husband to tell her the cause
of his wrath Miss Kingsbury rose to
the occasion nobly.
The Iago of Mr.. McGinn was force-
full, insinuative and crafty. His read
ing. of the we'll known lines was dra-
matte.
The settings were pretentious, the
dark hues, however, becoming at times
oppressive because of the darkened
auditorium.
e. P. Foot, musical director at Fisch-
er's theater, had a narrow escape from
serious injury last night when one OF
| the amateurs in the course of his act
| fred a revolver so that the powder flew
| into Foot's face. Fortunately his eyes
| escaped, but several grains of the ex-
| plosiye were driven into his skin, IN
| flicting a painful though not serious
wound. The boy responsible for the
| accident tried first to shoot into the
| air. but when the revolver failed to &c
off turned it downward and toward
Mr.. Foot.
| Among the amateurs at Fischer's last
night was Erred K. Lewis" Lewis re-
cited the Mad rawlings of John McCul-
| Tough" and he won second prize, the
| Arst going to a boy clog dancer. In
cidentally however, Lewis" won sew
eral bets made with physicians whom
he had met at the American hospital
The doctors, 1t seems, had joshecshim
nv saving that his spiel wasn't strong
enough to finish within the money at
snv theater in town. The bets fol-
| lowed and last night the crowd was on
hand to see Lewis fall down. They
Missed when he appeared and guyed
him numerically, but he won second
place Just the same and his bets
| sT,ewis'' is merely stage name. In
private life Lewis is an advertising
man whose name in the directory ap-
pears very near the front of the book