The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-01-05
BY FRANKLIN FYLEs.

ed in roles utilizing their loneliness to
the utmost. It is a coincidence that
CLYDE Fitch and Henry V. Esmond
posed Ethel and Maxine as fortune
telIers who fascinate each a very wor-
thy man in his first visit. Fitch s
scheme of setting forth the society
smart Ethel, the Gibsonian girl in ex-
elsis, as a fake Egyptian soothsayer IN
Her Sister" telling fortunes for Lon
don gulls and guineas, is worked out
efectually. Ethel is introduced as a
girl of culture unable to earn con-
genially luxurious living without re-
course to her Unborn power OF lure; out
she utilizes her charms without
worse sin than taking as a sorceress.
She enters her place of humbug as
quite herself. gowned and hammered
mOdishly not only, but wearing the
gown and the manner so easily as not
to seem aware of them. 1t is the in
sinuatively enhancing Ethel. the ire
sistable iollier, that Fitch shows first
The sister VINO gives the title or Her
Sister, to this play is waiting Tor her.
Ar. actress resembling Ethel in gen.
eraI way has been found in a Desmond
Kelley, and the choice is shrewdly such
that, while they look much alike when
they come together in kiss greeting,
scarcely a minute of speech and move
ment has passed ere it is plain that
Desmond is a weakling who needs the
fond care of the strong Ethel Sisterly
love and sacrifice is the theme.
x x +
Audiences like to peek beyond the
ordinary sights of the stage and see
the processes that are usually hidden.
Fitch lets US watch Ethel as she makes
herself up for Isis, the Egyptian. She
covers her soft brown hair with a
smooth jet wig, turns the pink of her
face to pallor with powder, puts on a
long red robe embroidered with strange
symbols, shuts out the bright daylight,
makes the dimness weird with green
fsh shades over electric bulbs, ignites
sandalwOod sticks TO make mystic
incense, takes a high seat behind ia
BILE, and, with the aspect of a figure
vivified from a mural picture in an
Egyptian tomb, is gazing raptly into
a big glass globe when Arnold Colling-
worth is admitted. Thus the play gets
under Roadway oddly. and the quality
of picquancy. now merry and again
sad. lasts to the end. The program
couples the last half of Charles Ed
ward Stuart Cosmo Gordon LennoX's
name with Fitch's in authorship; the
first half being used only when he is
mentioned at full length as a descend
ant of Charles II, and an ennobled
sweetheart by the way Of the dukes Of
Richmond Lennox has formulated
many roles for his wife, Marie Tenn
pest, out of French originals. and / i'm
agine that he found this fraud of a
fortuneteller on the Paris stage in an
altogether rougish farce, that Charles
Frohman bought it from him, and that
II, a. q a limo Ethel Por-
rymore and whimsical heroines fit each
other, rewrote it with honest senti-
ment in the place of funny deviltry.
X X
A dramatist's job of making a popu-
lar heroine is half done for him if the
actress to carry out his design is d
lovely wheedler. He may let such one
do reasonably what in an unengaging
woman would seem preposterous. Col
lingworth comes ostensibly to have his
fortune told, but really to begin a
study of her fitness to become the wife
of his nephew; and when she cons
vinces him within few minutes with
DO better evidence than her individual
charm, that she is worthy to be re-
ceived into a good family. we don't
look on him as too cTedulOus, but as a
shrewd discerner of character at sight.
i llt tIlu VI Tic pldN II ODN1OuS lItil
and there. Ethel and Collingworth love
each other spontaneously. His nephew
turns away from her when, TO save her
sister from scandal, she confesses false
ly that she is the missing cO-respOn-
dent in a divorce case. The uncle
stands steadfast in her defense. dem
Onstrates her innocence, and finally
gets her for a willing wife. Fitch's
writing is clever, EtheFs acting is the
best she has done, and the success is
earned yet most of il is due TO the
womans highly appealing sort of love
Illness.
In the same company is EthePs cous-
in, and John DTew's daughter, Louise,
with just the face, I fancy, that her
famous grandmother had at twenty. 1t
is said that Louise's parents opposed
her desire TO act: and her essays in
roles calling for prettiness have not
been encouraging; but now as the at
tendant at Isis fakery shop, with an
eccentric makeup and d cOckney
tongue, she makes me expect to see
her. some day, do Mrs. Malaproy just
as gran'ma did.
x
Henry Y. Esmond was a frequent