Los Angeles herald., 1908-06-03
THE CAST
By sIDLE LAWRENCE

BY SIDLE LAWRENCE
TEMBERS of the Belasco company
N forsake melodrama for rollicking
1A1- farce this week and apparently
enjoy the change quite as much as the
audience enjoys the play. The piece
is Deitrichstein's nonsensical. Before
and After" the title. by the way, hav-
ing been cribbed from patent medicine
literature and the idea from the pro-
moters of a certain breakfast food.
First presented in Los Angeles at
the Belasco theater about year ago,
the present cast shows few dupllca-
tions. Harry Glazier, Richard Vivian,
William Yerance and Adele Earring
ton of the present company play their
old roles. Joseph A. Galbraith has
succeeded Lewis S. Stone as DR.. Page;
Florence >Smythe plays the role for
merly portrayed by Lillian Albertson;
Dorothy Bernard is cast as the pseudo
Mrs. Page, part Marian Berg played;
Charles Ruggles has succeeded Harry
Earl as the colored bell boy, and
George Barnum follows John Daily
Murphy in the role of Driscoll
| Before and After" is a dramatiza-
ton of the idea embodied in the Sun
ny Jim" advertisements. familiar two
or three years ago, and which ex-
fast cereal. In the farce, however, the
sunniness is superinduced not through
the use of a matinai wheat food, but
by a little powder which is admins
tered at different times to pretty near
ly everybody in the cast. There fol-
lows an era of good feeling, part1cu-
larly noticeable between the sexes. DR..
Page, who really loves his wife, kisses
a fair patient and the fun begins. A
somewhat similar invention was en-
ployed many years ago in Sol Smith
Russelps old comedy of "Bewitched,"
only in that play, as they would say
in Dublin. the powder was an amulet.
Farce Has Three Laughs
There are just three laughs in Be
fore and After'-no more and no less.
Each of them, however. is an act long.
And these laughs, added to the
Smiles which some few men in the
audience enjoyed between acts, made
a most merry night of it. Apart from
the hilarity produced by the Sunny
Jim" powders. Mr.. Deitrichstein has
enlivened his work by the introduction
of two excellently humorous charac-
ters, James J. Jeffreys, who cavorts
through three acts Indignantly and
somewhat profanely explaining to
every one with whom he comes in con-
tact that he's mo relation to the
champion" and Cora Bell, the "origi-
nal Black Crook in Seattle"-a lady
of the stage whose vulgarities in at
tire and demeanor are quite as aston
ishing as the youthfulness of her coif-
fure.
Mr.. Galbraith plays DR.. Page in the
rollicking spirit of broadest farce. The
role is joke, and Galbraith makes 1t
a good one. Adele Harrington as Cora
Bell is funnier than her own hat, a
Merry Widow millinery monstrosity
of colossal proportions. Harry Gla-
zier as the man who was not cham
pion, William Yerance as the French
man in pursuit of "revanche" and
Fanchon Everhard in a remarkably
skillful bit as shop girl contributed
largely to the evenings merriment.
Miss Florence Smythe and Richard
Vivian in parts as nearly straight"
as farce will permit did excellently
what they were called upon to do
Dorothy Bernard did her best to be
vulgar as the CRATER friend of the
grating Cora Bell, but succeeded only
in being winsome. The spice of stage
deviltry is yet lacing in the Bernard
art and-of course--we would not
have it otherwise.
Miss Alice Treat Hunt, leading wo-
man of the Belasco stock company,
who has been seriously i'll for the past
week, was said last night to be holding
her own. The crisis in her disease
Hunt so weakened that she has not yet
been able to rally. SO far as DR.. r.
N. Smith, the attending physician,
could tell her condition last night was
practically unchanged from that of the
night before.