Los Angeles herald., 1909-07-11
BY w. HERBERT BLAKE

X geles you Nln into a playwright
~ He is sitting beside you in the
street car, dining next table at the res
taurant, selling you cigars at the to-
bacconist's. or forcing them upon your
suffering urbanity at the club. The
streets are swarming with mute in
glorious Ibsens and sad, sequestered
Shakespeares.
Why do we seldom see any of their
products on the local stock company
stage? Not all of them are impossible
and a fair majority, | hazard, are as
susceptible of benevolent furnishing
by an imaginative stage MANAGER as
sergeant Kitty" "A Day and Night,
or "A Milk White Flag" In the mul-
tiplicity of nice dry chaH there mus ti
peep out. here and there, amid the
bundles now reposing on the managers
desks. some grains of dramatic truth
and beauty No one can accuse the
local stock company directors OF blind
ness to talent What then, Is the So
luton of the enigma?
Come closer, and let me whisper 1t
in your ear: don't believe they read
theml
It's dull work reading ten poor plays
on the chance of running across a
masterpiece in the eleventh, I think l
hear some one say. So II is, 1t Is also
dull hearing scores of revived antlqul-
ties. for the sake of seeing how near
Archibald, the Matinee Idol can come
to Duplicating the success of Goodwin
or Sothern, or Lawrence Barletl' MAY
he it's duh for the actors, too. ana
the critics. Retract the word! What
are they paid for?
And then. there is always the safe,
sure road to favor with the lhSehl9 US
deviser of theatrical advertising, tnat
of informing a waiting world thaI
"Marmaduke AlgernOn Battercake, IN
his stupendous impersonatlon: Is pet
Ter than Mansfield in the original pro-
duction (Which | had the pleasure OF
seeingsin New York;" So long as the
English language heroically keeps its
face straight there will pe more ways
than one for critic who is Thoroughly
broken TO the traces to march into the
noble Appoint Caslon type of the ad-
vertising columns!
OF course. there must be insistent eX-
ceptions to any wholesale damnation OF
stock revivals. And the ineXplicable
fact is that these exceptions are the
very plays we so seldom see revived.
How long since you saw Rosemary,
or sweet Lavender or "The Cricket
on the Hearth" played in stock? Dld
it ever occur TO you what charming
Rosalind Miss Florence Reed would
make. or how melIihuously Harry Mes
taver would gambol in the comedy
shoes Of MercutiO or LauncelOt GObbO !
PraiseWorthy recent reVlNals have been
the sympathetic rendition of shore
Acres" at the BelasCO and the well bal
anced production of when knights
Were Bold" at the Burbank. There IS
room on the stage of stock revival Tor
Sidney Carton and Sherlock Holmes so
long as the heroic ideals of the Eng
lish speaking peoples endure unvitiated
by German rationalism and Latin de-
cadence.
Another managerial mystery is the
almost religious awe with which SO
many theater magnates treat our good
old friend, comic opera. PlOtless, Wit
less musical comedies with heaps OF
fine fat girls and tons of smeary
makeup go careening off broadway out
into the provinces with the X. q l..
or the Schubert" label as COnspiCuously
plasteTed on as a smudge OF foreign
tags on the suit case of globe trOt-
ter. Weary. dispirited managers in
Fresno and Oshkosh and Phoenix sign
as they book them and then consol-
inglv reflect that anyway, they don't
cali themselves comic operas" That is
the objectionable sin, from the box
office viewpoint.
AS matter Of fact. it is an un-
,7ardonable myth Good comic operas
intalligently produced, never failed tC
fiji theater in a city of amusement
Loving population. The first and cleV-
crest of the present family OF musical
yhirl-i-gigs-such good shows as
wang" ana THE Isle of Champagne
and later king DOdO," were, properly
speaking, comic operas though, IN the
latter case with a somewhat diluted
pIot. sergeant Kitty which the in
dOmitable MOrosco company has
whipped into tolerable comedy for a
second week at the Majestic. has con-
duered fatty on its merit as an
operate comedy. with the accent en-
phaticalv on the "operatic' What
Harry Girard and his hard working
company of fellow artists did with
Sergeant Kitty under huge difficulty
they can do with satisfying case II
Martha or THE Pirates of Pen
zance."
The same cant about comic opera be-
ing a dead issue was blown about OF
the tongue of greenroom Philosophers
some fifteen years ago. Then. on 4
venture, the Castle Square opera com
pany began its invasion Of the west
and its triumphs are still recent enough
memories to be worth recalling. A GER
tain summer garden in St. Louis
which is patronized by anything but
the highbrow contingent, annually
produces THE Mikado" as part Of its
Tepertoire of light opera and musical
comedy. "Pinafore' charmed a cosmO-
nolitan north side clientele in second
class Chicago beer garden few years
ago, and still wins its way as the ira