The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-06
THEATRICAL LETTER
 OF FRANKLIN FL YES

New York, Dec 1.-Two plays smear Broadway stages with blood and two let daughter loose. Edith Wynne Matthison and Mimi Akuglla are grewsofne. Fritzi Scheff and Anna Held are biithesome,
 Let us laugh last and weep first. 'The winterfeast" is so grim trag- edy that ten of its men, all it has save two. are stabbed to death and a woman dies of heartbreak. This trag- edy with such an abnormally high death rate is of Iceland ages ago It's Thorkel is fierce cid Viking, ashamed of his goa, Valbrand, for writing with the pen of a bard rather than like his foster brother, Biorn, figkfing with the sword of a warrior. The young man loved Herdisa, but the poet would have wooed in vain If. through a sie. she had not been made to believe that the warrior scorned her love. During twenty years she was valbrand's wife and Bjorn was thought to have been killed by Indians while exploring Americai but the absentee returned, and Her disa learned how she had been de- ceived. Then the bloodshed set in, Old ThorkeI put on his horned cap of valor, shouldered his long sword, went out for vengeance on hateful priest who had let Herdisa know the truth, and coon came back to tell that he had slain his enerny.s seven brawlty sons in fair combats. Thorkel, with head built up by a false forehead and shaggy wig. with heels three inches high on his boots and with voice so big that 1t might have served as a sea trumpet in his stormy voyaglngs. looked and sounded ferocious enough to turn of 2 job of slaughter like that.
 There are two ways to look at ''The st''-appreciatively and dis paragingiy. It is one of six dramas which Charles Ram Kennedy, unable to stage in his native England. brought along when he came to Amer ica with his wife. Edith Wynne Mat thison, to act in the old morality lplay of "Everyman." A Brooklyn irish man. Walter Hampden, who had be- come a thoroughly English acton, but retained a hustling Americanisni. in- duced Henry Miller with argument and money to produce one of those pieces. The Servant in< the House" In that darihgly religious drama. Hampden personated Christ reincarnated as a butler in a manner so reverent that church people generally were pleased. Mrs Matthison- Kennedy accepted an Unpleasant role then with a promise of the. .Icelandic wife if @The Winter feast" should follow. She had worked on Shak kespearean. Ibsenlan. Creek tragic and other upper dramatic planes. and was eager to so to the Icelandic.
 Four actresses are named above as being here this week with new plays. Clear ideas of their endeavors may be given by describing their best four scenes. The Iceland wife, Herdisa, has a savage nature. Mistaloably hating Bjorn for his supposed flouting of her passion, she demands of her unloved but loving husband, Valbrand, that he kill his foster brother. The combat Is fought on a bridge in a storm, and word comes to her that aot RJorn's body, but valbrand's, is thrown into the icy stream to be carried out to sea. Her distress is wild, but not boisterous. and I don't know an American actress capable of showing such a long-ago, faraway, barbaric sort of despair. Olaf. young son of Bjorn, is an acceptable wooer of her young daughter yet in her savagery she makes him take an oath to slay