Los Angeles herald., 1909-09-13
THE CAST
BY w. HERBERT BLAKE

|
BY w. HERBERT BLAKE
The probabilities always did have a
hard time of it in farce, but believe
they gave up Leo Dietrichstein as an
irreclaimable merchant of absurdities
long before he wrote Before and
After" If not before, then after. For
in the case of this very roaring piece,
the fun is lugged in the back door,
even as the Yerities are kicked off the
front piazza. And the kicking is wisely
done. For to keep our sober senses a
single moment is fatal to enjoyment
of the frantic incongruities which con-
stitute the action. OF only one thing
are we sure in a chaos of reason and a
shipwreck of reality: it will all come
out right. Farces that live always do.
And the Dietrichstein piece has sur
| ViVed it's prime of exaggerated praise
and kept us tolerably happy through
three acts yesterday afternoon at the
| Burbank
To relate the plot of farce takes
! longer than to enact it. To those un-
familiar with the present vehicle it may
be sufficient to aver that there is a
particular powder which makes people
merry. The playwright says so, and
we must believe it-for three acts. A
doctor accidentally takes a paperful,
from his wife, whom he really loves,
with a chorus girl, chaperoned by her
supposed mother. The three are pur-
! sued by an irate Frenchman, bent on
aVenging a mild Irritation in which he
has caught his wife and the doctor,
while the latter was under the inf1u-
ence of the palliating powder. AT Sar-
atoga all parties collide. The proprie-
| ties are stretched but plausibly main
tained The doctors wife follows, as
we'll as the husband of the chorus girls
| chaperon This husband is made to
think that the chorus girl is his long
| lost daughter. Another doctor takes
powder and develops an insane infat-
uation for his fellow physicians wire.
! And all the rest is-situations.
Whether you call the situations COM
ic or Objectionable will depend entirely
on whether you possess the comic
spirit If so, the most daring of them
will not oppress you, for the simple
reason that they are the most unreal
1t is not a question of Ignoring the
moralities, as is the case with many
farces of a coarser texture. You are
thinking of the moralities all the time.
You laugh at the plights of the char-
acters You also reprobate them. In
deed, you must have some sense of the
iniquity of their conduct to find 1t
| funny. And when the situations
!
member the powder and the inevitable
happy ending of farce. And the next
moment the scene shifts to another
structural contortion, and your scru-
pies are saved.
"Before and After" is not hrst
.class farce. The best things Of that
sort do not rely on tricks of magic for
| the Initiation of their action. They
proceed from some trait of character
! commonly abnormal jealousy, which,
misdirected and persisted in, becomes
| the groundwork and excuse for all inc
succeeding complexities of mlsunder-
standing and riotous mirth. But such
plays do not tread on the dangerous
| ground which the Dietrlchstein piece
| traverses. To make us excuse the ex-
| traordinary lapses from logical re-
spectability of which the principal
| character is guilty the playwright in
| PRODUCES the powder, very much as the
magician waves his wand before pro
/ duclng the rabbit from the silk hat. We
don't really believe in either the wand
| or the powder. But we want to. And
it is absolutely necessary that we want
to- in order for us to believe-for three
acts or fifteen minutes-in the marVeIs
! that follow.
The conclusion of the current piece Is
unsatisfactory. 1t doesn't conclude
| The long separated husband and ac-
|
powder itself Is worked overtime to
unite the penitent doctor and his just
ly indignant helpmeet. The powder
| snarls their placid domesticity, but we
have the half positive notion that the
action itself ought to straighten out
the tangle, not the magic potion: we
get indigestion over that powder. There
! is too much of 1t. The stage ceases to
be a stage ond becomes drug store.
! And drug stores have an evil odor at
| times.
But the piece is harmless enough.
| and at it's most critical stages the
drugged physician longs to get decent
ly out of it and back into the world Of
sane realities. That makes 1T the run
nier. If he were really the scoundrel
he is taken for we would not sympa-
thize with him. And so we come back
to the peculiar quality inherent In even
fair farce like this play. 1t poKes run
at the things we believe In with all
our heart, but we must continue TO De-
lieve in them in order to see the fun.
It is the dash of cognac in the cafe
noir. 1t exhilarates without sensualiz-
! ing.
The acting was almost uniformly
| good yesterday. Mr.. Beasley let ms
| personality melt into the character or
! the doctor without effacing either He
acted temporarily and divertingly. He
might have shown more anxiety In the
| last act when confronted with the ac-
cusing presence of his wife. 1t seemed
to perpiex, not really distress him. In
deed, the last act was the weakest of
the three in the hands Of most of the
east. 1t ought to be the most furious
and agonizing-in farce. The basic de-
| cency and integrity of the characters
| must be made clear, or the result is
mirthless and jading. 1t barely missed
this effect once or twice yesterday.
| Mr. Hartford moved alertly through
| his lines and business, and confirmed
his pleasing impression on the patrons
| of the Burbank created last week. He