Los Angeles herald., 1909-05-17
NEW GRINS BY
KOLB AND DILL
"PLAYING THE PONIES" is A
MAJESTIC HIT
"SHoOTING THE CHUTES" NOW
THE GRAND's ATTRACTION
Burbank Company Presents a Well
Gowned and Melodious Success in
1.-THE Circus Girl"-Other
Openings
BY w. HERnERT BLAKE

Bud, a jockey. y............ Albert E. Duncan
Hal Merritt, trainer. Percy V. Bronson
]. NJ. 0nne, Pinkerton Carlton Chase
We're MOnfOrt ................A Adele Rafter
Pluckus and Pickus, plungers.
&c. william Kolb and Max NJ. Dill
Grace Honey ............... Marion Miller
Col. Honey .............. Richard Stanton
Manager of Luna Park Harris Mcclure
Jockeys, trainers, plungers, pilSers, book
makers, tOuts and paying public.
Sufferers from apopleXy will instinc-
lively avoid the Majestic theater this
week, where those irrepressible fun
makers, Kolb and Dill, are presenting
what is perhaps their most successful
| vehicle of the season. Playing the
Ponies" as the latest triumph of far
cical situation is called, won a contin-
uous ovation Sunday night, and while
unconscionably long, even for a first
night it scored its surest points in the
last half hour-a time when even the
merriest of plays usually begins to
drag and pail.
There is nothing accidental about the
| humor of Kolb and Dill. artless as
| some of their most telling sallies seem.
Each is a carefully differentiated type
of Teuton-Dill of the ingenious, un-.
| assimilated foreigner: Kolb, with a
quite apparent touch of the Yankee and
a veneer of the west which marks him
clearly from the familiar Lew Fields
Characterization.
Abounds in Plots
playing the Pones" really has a
plot. 1t would be more accurate to de-
scribe it as composed of innumerableI 1
J plots which all fail of successful climax
through the diligence of those artful
| intruders, Kolb and Dill Triumphant
virtue never had merrier or more de-
voted champions.
OF course there is a "fixed" jockey,
and of course there is a handy substi-
tute who bears to victory the colors
| of the father of his best friends fan
Gee. The two funmakers are rival
claimants for the parentage of the
winning jockey, the doubtful identity
recalling Mark Twain's bath tub epi-
sode too familiarly to be classed as
really original. Which father" is the
true one we do not learn, and we are
just as glad to remain in ignorance.
In a series of amusing contretemps
| the plots unwind. tangle and emerge in
a laughable denouement, in which
broad farce and brisk repartee mingle
deftly. The musical numbers injected
from time to time are particularly
melodious and well placed, and the
chorus Sunday night sang with vigor
and aplomb. Notable musical numbers
were Easy Money" by Mr. Chase,
and Telephone Me, Dearle," wherein
Misses Mabel Baker and Gertrude AL
zora, suavely assisted by Kolb and
| Dill, enacted one of the brightest of
the recent crop of telephone ditties.
Miss stech Charms
Sidney de Grey was a likable plotter
and Adele Rafter a very fascinating
accomplice Miss Olga Stech, a Los
Angeles girl. is a dainty little actress
who danced bewitchingly and who
sang with charm when she had over
! come that first faintness of voice and
breathless utterance which beset every
returning native on his own country
side Her interpolated song, "Beauti-
full Eyes" in the second act won re-
peated encores.
Mr.. Duncan and Mr.. Bronson, as
jockey and trainer, respectively,
brought a breath of the track with
them.
The staging was faultless aside
from the cruelty of exhibiting appar-
emily bona fide champagne before a
hopelessly thirsty Sunday night audi
ence
The next attraction at the Majestic
will be a revival of Lonesome Town"
in which Kolb and Dill are expected to
frolic next week.
Murray and Mack opened the new
week at the Grand Sunday afternoon
with that rollicking musical comedy,
shooting the Chutes." With several
new songs and a handsomely gowned
chorus, these popular comedians have
| revamped a fortler play and brought
it up to date in a manner that bids
fair to place another permanent sue
cess to their credit Next to the dry
humor of Murry and the inimtable
drolleries of Mack, first honors in
Shooting the Chutes" must go to Miss
Lille Sutherland, whose Miss Hor-
tense" accompanied by a sprigbtly
chorus, was pretty piece of dancing.
Miss Bessie Tannehill won deserved
applause in a bit of genuine pathos
depicting the seven ages of romance,
from babyhood to the aged couple
nearing the end of life's pathway hand
in hand. The very incongruous tune
was "Cuddle Up Little Closer LoveyI
Nine" but both acting and singing
were so mutually appropriate that this
solecism passed unnoticed clerical
exponent of muscular Christianity and
another of those stage EnglishmenI
who block the most sober efforts to-
ward an Anglo-American alliance wereI
other diverting features.
Murray and Mack's burlesques on
a ball game, a poker game and a. box
ing match-our three national amuse-
ment staples-emust not be overlooked.
Shooting the Chutes" should please
|
w. H. B.
The Burbank stock company has al
ready made two or three distinct hits
in musical comedy, and the "Circus
Girl" which opened Sunday afternoon,
bids fair to eclipse all previous work
along that line.
The piece itself is certainly one of
the best of the kind ever seen on the
coast. The lyrics by Harry Greenbank
and Adrian Ross are appropriately
humorous or sentimental, as the oc-
cason demands, and the music by Ivan
Caryll has catchy Tilt and rhythmical
novelty that will make it popular with
the whistling crowd. as we'll as with
those who enjoy something not too
stereotyped.
The scenes on q Partisan boulevard
outside a cafe, in the ring and green
room of Drivellis circus, and finally
at the artists ball during the fetes of
the Mi-Careme in Paris all afford op-
portunity for brilliant costuming and
the introduction of amusing songs and
dances.
Book Is Merry One
The book fairly bristles with jokes
that are really funny and scene two of
| the second act was literally one con-