The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-28

you may imagine the personal aspects of the triangle.
 Of course, Grace is smooth and gen. tie: also. she Is sly and tricky. She gets together as guests five men who deviled with Dorothy before worthing's excess of speed in motoring with the siren; and that destroys his liking of her. A former wooer of the wife kind ly obliges her by pretending to renew his suit by her encouragement; and thereupon the husband becomes a jealous lover of his wife. That Is all. Thompson Buchanan has written "A Woman's Way wittily and 1t makes light. bright diversion: but it lacks odd saliencies to write about.
 The woman in This Woman and This Man." is in a sadder plight: for she is going to be a mother. the man will be the father and he refuses to become her husband; whereat she locks the door. phones for a parson. levels a pistol and gives the man the choice between. a wedding and funeral That Is the kind of girl Avery Hop wood has created for Carlotta Nilsson to personate. She Is no sobber of her grief. or waller or her wrong. She says that for what they have done she Is as blamable as he. that she will bear without a complaint the physical suf- fering that nature cruelty apportions to her sex and none to his: that she Is willing to share disproportionately with him the disgrace; but she de- mands a lawful father of the child that will have done no wrong. and the alternative shall be the destruction of the three lives there in that room
 That Is bold variant of the ordinary girls led astray in plays. but it goes with the trend of modern drama of common sense.
 Will the upshot be marital or nor tuary? This woman and this man" wait for the parson. The play has got under powerful headway. It has given If you haven't seen Carlotta, a best description, of her is to saysgthat she might be younger sister of Mrs Fiske. When the curtain shuts her in with the man (embodied excellent ly by an unknown Milton Sills) leav- ing over till the next act his choice between a wedding and a funeral the suspensive interest'is intense. The up- shot Is a marriage. but wejlock is de- layed six years: for in the next act 1t Is told that the wife went away from her husband immediately, hid herself and her child in New England will lage, earned a living as a school teacher and was at length discovered by the husband. The author has tried to show the mans transition from heartless seducer to an honest lover: but the metamorphosis is hazy and about all that the audience sees clear 1y Is a reunion of the parents through the timeworn expedient of mutual love of the child.
 There Is a novelty however, in the use made of the child. The Irish Ol- colt and Mack lullaby youngsters to slumber. as the German Emmett did: {: and in many a rural play children say their prayers before laying themselves down to sleep; but 1t has been kept for Carlotta Nilsson to take off an urchin's day clothes and put on his night clothes. The boy looks just about the six years ascribed to him by the play. If the program didn't name the prodigy John. I should say the little actor is girl; but If that were so, the Gerry society might have something to say about 1t. The child you understand. has brought mother and father together. but not as wife and husband. and they are utterly estranged. Daddy has outfitted a nur- sery with costly toys for the mite and goes there to play with them and him. At bedtime nanny takes him on her lap and strips off his trousers and stockings. leaving him to frolic minute with legs bare full length be- fore putting on the lower section of pajamas. She next removes his Jacket and shirt. and for another minute he frisks naked from neck to waist. We have had children reuniting parents long before and ever since the late Bronson Towards Young Mrs. Win throp," and some of them have been shown in their nighties; but Carlotta Nilsson is,. the first fmimic mother to strip her child; and I am bound to write that she does 1t with the delft grace of a real and tender mamma.
 The new play in which Bertha Kalich enacts an erring woman. "The Unbroken Roaj." was performed once for small invited audience before it was sent away into New England. Its men of consequence are politicians in a western state. Bertha comes among them through pardon by a governor. She is not the shoplifter that jury thought her. but another and more usual smirch of disgrace Is indelible. and when a party boss would marry her for mutal love. her past darkens her present and shadows her future Bertha Kalich Is an emotional actress, the acute type, with German accent in her English and g. Bernhardten French manner to enforce her out breaks The oddly strenuous passage is that in which she is grieved and angered by her lovers refusal to mar ry her. and proposal that she become his paramour instead of wife. She feels like killing him though she loves him: but the governor. to whom she owes her liberation. will be defeated for a second term in office If that boss doesn't help him; and she gets that aid by promising to deliver herself to the man she adores and jespises. That is variation. as you see., of an oft repeated tragic expedient--a womans payment of a price with her honor. The cruelty of the extortion Is not less because she Is already blackened by mlsbehavior.
 Have you observed the number of new names among the dramatists? Surely, managers and actors are less'I timid than they used to be in experi- menting with untried writers. Hop good meant nothing to you when you read the word in connection with This Woman anJ This Man." nor did Buchanan with "A Womans Way" and Thomas Dickinson is as new to theatri- l cal acquaintances as his drama of "The | Unbroken Road" His composition is | virile and sometimes fiercely outbreak ing. Without a houseful of people to | watch as well as those on the stage, | found it hard to appraise the popular | value of this play, which comes to | In honest wedlock instead of vicious mating; but I guess that | with skilled revision 1t will prosper
 A recent rush of plays Illustrating the Tenderloin type of vicious actress may led some of us to regard their subject matter as new to the theatre. It Is not so at all. As long as seven years ago "ZaZa" served the uurnOse