Los Angeles herald., 1908-12-16
HOUSE OF THOUSAND
CANDLES, MELODRAMA
MUCH CHATTER AND NOISE TO
SMALL PURPOSE
Auditorium Players Work HeroicaIIy
but Dramatic Version Is Even
Worse Than the
Book
BY LENIUEL PARTON


The Lewis S. Stone company offers
bowling melodrama of the most vo-
ciferous type in "The House of a
Thousand Candles" at the Auditorium
this week. Happily there is no blood
letting and the only casualties are
several strained suspenders and a
caved-in door. Meredith Nicholson
book, as a book. is not so bad as it
might be, but as a play it works out
into a sort of inverted pig-in-the
clover roposition-rather diverting,
but lacking in dramatic merit.
Old John Glenarm, to test the 10y
atty of his grandson, makes a will,
leaving him his estate, on condition OF
his living a year in a weird country
house which he, the elder Glenarm,
has built inthe wilds of Indiana. He
gives out the news of his death, but
decides not to die really, but to stick
around awhile and see what his
grandson does. Young John returns to
New York after sort of genteel pan
handling expedition around the world
and is told of his grandfather's death
and his strange will by Arthur Pick
ering, the elder Glenarm's attorney
This man Pickering is very wicked
sort of person; you must remember
that. Glenarm heroically decides to
accede to the terms of his grand
fathers will and to go to the Indiana
house and live for a year and pull
down the inheritance.
The Woman Appears
In case of Jacks refusal to fulfill
the requirements of the will the prop
erty is to go to Miss Marian Dever-
eauX, whom the young man has seen
or at1A with Tyh bsa ha 9
promptly fallen in love. He goes to
live at the house and Miss DevereauX
appears and he asks her to marry him,
not knowing who she is. Bates, a
faithful servant, in whose hands the
care OF the younger Glenarm has been
entrusted by the elder, is at the house,
and If you are a good guesser you
as shifty as the elusive card in a
rouge ct noir deck, or as loyal as an
old servant should be. You are en-
lightened at the end of the play. The
wicked Pickering, who, it appears, has
borrowed money from the elder Glen
arm and is anxious to get back the
notes, thinks they are hidden in the
hires the caretaker Morgan to prowl
around the house and sound the walls
with a hammer. Morgan is an un-
pleasant, red-headed man. One of the
best things he does is to spread out
his legs far enough apart to allow a
tamale cart to be driven through, and
then say char! hari' just like that.
There is fighting parson, an adjunct
of a nearby young Women'S school, a
facetious Irishman and a girly-girly
young man from the seminary. Also
one ferocious sheriff
The will provides that if Glenarm
marries or becomes engaged that the
property goes to Miss Devereaux.
Pickering, learning from Morgan, who
was in hiding in a secret recess in the
wall when Glenarm did his love max
ing, that Glenarm had asked the young
woman to marry him, declares that the
Will is broken, and summons the sheriff
to evict Glenarm. There is fight in
the house at midnight, and just as the
sheriff's forces seem about to conquer,
the old man steps out of another secret
recess in the wall. He hadn't been
dead at all! Maria Devereaux was one
of his best friends and had been in on
the plot to try out young John, or
whatever 1t was they were trying to
do to him. Bates also is vindicated,
and everything is just as lovely as
can be.
Strain Canons of Art
There are many methods allowable
in the making of books which cannot be
used in the structure of plays. No
dramatist trying painstakingly to vio-
late every known law Of dramatic art
could have succeeded better than Mr..
Middleton and Mr.. Nicholson have to-
gether. The most glaring defect of the
piece appears in the failure of the au-
thor to take the audience into his con-
fidence regarding the fact that the old
man is not actually dead, and that
Bates is not the villain Glenarm be-
lieves him to be. If there is one law of
play building that is elementary, it is
this one.
The Stone aggregation has done all
that good acting and good staging pos
sibly could do for such a play.
mice and Men," Madeline Lucette
Ryley's pretty little play, is on for the
week at the BelascO. Crinoline and
hoop-skirts may pass, but the interest
of such innocent little human dramas
seems not to have lessened. Sweet
Kitty Belairs," "She Stoops to Con-
quer'' and all the other plays of the
stilted thee and thou of eighteenth
century days are as popular as ever,