Los Angeles herald., 1909-10-18
The CAST
By w. HERRERT BLAKE

Michael Morton did a good job when
he turned a leering French farce into
a laughing English comedy. In the
play, MY Wife," revived at the Bur-
bank yesterday, there is ample evil
dence that he did just that. The COM
edy is as truly taken from the
French as was Calais once upon a
time, and with better reason. For the
French have filed comedy to so cruelty
fine a point that it has almost ceased
to be human, and Edmond Rostand
has very logically produced a play in
which all the characters are animals.
Most of his fellow playwrights of the
modern French school do the same
thing, except that they label the ami
mails men, Partisan politeness persist
ing.
But Michael Mortons adaptation is
a different thing. 1t is really a criti-
cism on the original, as all real adap-
tations ought to be. 1t turns the Gallo
irony into English paradox, with
dash of blithe Irish wit to keep us
smiling. 1t makes a man of the hero,
which Is what French dramatists con-
stitutionally seem unable to do. 1t
makes a fool of him as well, but an
honest fool, not a faithless enc. Ger
aid Eversleigh agrees to marry wO-
man in order to help her inherit
fortune, which, however, he will not
share, promising to divorce her speed
ilv that she may wed her own choice,
who is taboo to her father. This pre-
posterous arrangement works out
much after the fashion of "He Fell in
Love with His Wife" by the some
what voluble E. P. Roe. The man who
was ultimately to win the wife gets
arrested and falls in love with the
Jailers daughter. Eversleigh fights
duel with a Frenchman who expressed
ironical amazement at the quaint fact
that the wife received adoring letters
from another man. There is last act
of mutual capitulation, and then Mr.
and Mrs. Gerald EYersieigh decide that
they have done a very wise thing by
getting married and that the divorce
problem is not worth worrying about,
so far as they personally are con-
cerned. There is a superbly idiotic
moment in which the husband writes
a check to recompense the rival who
was to wed the wife, even as the rival
writes a check to reimburse the hus-
band for his own failure to keep the
compact. The husband wants the wife
so badly that he is willing to pay any
price for her. The other wants an
other woman so badly that he is will
ing to pay any price to avoid marry
ing the first. Both exchange checks,
and the act itself is symbolical of the
jolly folly of the original scheme OF
the three of them. The magic of the
playwright has saved all three from
a pestilential bit of stupidity, but one
feels after all that they don't deserve
to be saved. Doubtless Mr.. Morton
had something the same idea when he
cleansed the plot for inspection by de-
cent Americans.
The talk is the best part of the play,
and I am willing to wager that the
talk is mainly the work of the adapt
er. The lines were well spoken yes
terday by every member of the COM
pany and the bantering humor that
turks beneath all swept us into SYM
pathy with characters which on their
sheer merits didn't invite it. Mr..
Beasley and Miss Hall played the two
leading roles in a way that let us for
get the eccentricity of their situation
in the wholesomeness of their view
point. Mr. Stockbridge was very fun
ny and very true to part as Gibby
Eversleighs friend. Gibby, I am sure,
is all the work of Mr.. Morton. No
French playwright could imagine an
English peer as such a commonplace,
unexciting good fellow. Mr.. Yerance
made a capital French father-in-law
l. 1 I,