The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-01-17

New York, Jan 15--The name of the single play new this week to New York in the course of ordinary theatri- cal business. "A Bad Mans Wife" didn't promise any disclosure of dram atic art or iiteraturei so looked a. round for things intelligently read- able: and saw that pantomimic aet- ing was at the fore in diverse enter tainments---extrayaga vaudeville and grand opera. The high forms of music are above my reach and I won't fool with La Chair," which guessed wasn't piece sof furniture to sit on but "The Flesh" which found out to mean the corporeal beauty of an Ita- Han wife with jealous husband and passionate paramour. No prima donna singer had been asked to take silent roie, of course: but grand opera outfit always includes Q premier danseuse: and so 1t was an odette Valery who made the graphic motions to show how a coquettish wife mad deped two men by her heshly wftcher- les. The husband came upon the wife with the lover she preferred to him and was minded to do some fnurdering; but the woman lured him away, ope- rated her wiles and so enteranced him that lie kissed instead of killing her; whereupon sae contemptuousiy derided him and he in chagrin slaughters him self.
 odette, the danseuse, couldn't help making the wife ofdenough to behaye herself; yet she rendered "the flesh" handsome, graceful and conducive to the fine art of panomirnic expression. ''La Chair" was given betwixt Cava- lveria Rustfcana" and "i Pagliacci," so that one evening held three traged- .ies of mems murders for misbehaving Aln nA Ix4, melodrmmatfo sandwich had been but tered so often that the nodish people swallowed 1t without ,s, tasting. They smacked their lips, though, at the slice of flesh" that was pqppared ana mustarded fresh and hot between.
 Pantomimic dancing Is ffa new factor in extravaganza. Two of the restau- rants that Americans go to see in Paris, the Moulin Rouge and the Alb. baye have been visible awhile in New York plays Now that their surprises have become familiar. these shows jolly their jaded spectators anew by showing things brought directly from those original places of notorious de- viltry. Whoever visited the abbey within a year may have seen thin, pale man dart away from his glass of absinthe at a lone table. Jostie those who stood in his way to the centre of the floor and there stand still a moment giaring around him like a maniac. Seemingly melted by the lively music of the orchestra. he sud- denly danced uriously---without any method--tAiing no regulated steps merely digging with all his might and tremendous rapldity. Again he came to a dazed standsti1l--again went in- to the frantic danoe-repeating the brief spells of inertness and agitation during five minutes or so. That was his paid speciality and he Is now giv- ing it in the abbey" scene of the play in New York
 The oddity imported from the red min" is a dance by young man and a girl both as ghastly white as that other one In both cases the evident intention is to suggest drugged drunk ards in an abnormal state of intoxica- ton. He looks sodden and she sullen as they come into the dancing throng. Space is given to their waltz, which becomes at once an exhibition of hypnotic control of the girl by the man. He handles her roughly. fling ing her 1.-the figure about, pulling down her mass of jet hair around her