The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-01-24

to ridieuie--have not been SO reckless as to do without love story. Ihey
 let us know that the victim of their
 .vampire next after his college mate was his sweetheart, singer fit for pro
 fessIonal hontrs, from whose voice ne
 drew away the heart-notes and soui- tones. leaving her to be killed py
 failure withnut them. By way or a- tenement he has reared the dread wo- mans girl as his ward. and at the out set of the play she Is premising artist. 4 picture by her took prize when she was studing in Paris and she has painted in his studio what she hopes will be a masterpiece for the Academy; but 1t is rejected and by now the audience easily guesses why. The vampire has drawn from her In their close association the artis- tic essence of her nature. But ne loves her other than paternally and would save her from his absorptive outrage. In sending her away to work safely elsewhere. he lets her know or his passion and she in her astonish- ment informs him that she and the novelist he has vampired are betroth- cd. These young lovers are Katherine Florence. very sweet and gentle, as always, and q Mark Smith. who may be a descendant of the oldtime Mark Smith for aught 1 know and anyway delineates the brain-robbed, dazed and almost crazed author in parity with Keiierd's blend of the normal with the abnormal In the brain-robber.
 Through two acts The Vampire holds it's grip on the audience, and then in a final third lets so. Never theiess, I hardly see how 1t can fail of a vogue with people who don't dis like to think at the theatre. or to come away with matter for nightmares. The young novelist wakes mornings to find that his nights faffcies for fiction are gone and he is brsin-fagged to the verg of dementIa. It Is the girl who hits on the solution of the mystery. The vampire sneaks into the poor fellows room when he Is asleep. lays hands on his head. draws his ideas from his brain and leaves him nothing for his own work The girl cornpels her weakened sweetheart to go to sleep while she hides and watches
 The vampire enters. applies his hands and utters the words that within are dreamliy forming themselves into phrases. don't know what more l should expect in the way of pheno- mena. Surely. can't ask Kellerd tc leap on Smith. like the vampire of tradition. and savageiy suck his blood
 or surgically open his skull and re- move the gray matter from his brain
 yet I am. with the audience. keyed up for something or other spectral
 Instead Kellerd pleads guilty tC the girls charge of intellectual vam- prlism and he responds with pro- ionged plea that 1t is no new thing
 As ultra a flight into oldsstyie ro- mafic,sm as that drama is Into new stvie occultism is The Barber of New Orleans" Its time and place are oyei century ago where the Missfssipp
 still runs-i It's fresh water into the saIted Gulf of Mexico. which was then called Little Paris in the Wilderness
 The outset is in the shop of the barber
 but it is spoken of as an ateiier by the Creole beaus and bellies who go there to take lessons in fencing and dansing as well as to be shorn ot shayen. Surgery could be had there
 too, to the extent of blood letting and tooth pulling. And those stranger wht dropped in and with a casual air re- marked to the barber, "Is thls gooa shop to get throat cut were vel eomed as A fellow political conspira' tors for at this crisis Louisiana was be ing. shifted 'twixt France and Spair just before its purchase by the United States. So the barber was revoiu
 tioniat. And, oh, have nearly for gotten that he was a dramatic author , Quite carelessly he mentions a play O his as having been produced the nigh before with the same success tha attends all his doings in menial ser vice or professional achievement. Yol will perceive that the hero here createl 1 by Edward Childs Carpenter and per
 sonated by William Faversham is