The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-03-07

bowed to his initiatory audience. in- Heated. whether the author is Jew of a Gentle. I know that Thomas. Klein Fitch and other American play wrights have contemplated dramas, on this subject and scenarios have been carefully prepared for managers con but the big Christian-ver- sus-Jew drama is yet to be written.
 Meyer and Sons are bankers. the program says, in "a midwest city Of a hundred thousand people," Senior Meyer is staunch in his scriptural doctrine that the Jews are Gods chosen people, and intermarriage with Gen. tiles Is repugnant to him Major Gray. an operator in public utilities. is equally stalwart in prejudice. Meyer and Gray are fellow townsmen of con- sequence In business. and politics. charities and education-excepting re- ngion; and they como into hateful collision when both strive for a tele- phone monopoly. In setting forth that controversy the author seems desirous of apportioning probity and guile equi. tably. The Christian bids for the favor of a reform mayor by selling c plot for the plant at half its value. snd the Jew beats him by giving q better one outright. Their sense of honor and their recourse to crafty graft, are
 
 doesn't affect their pockets they are both high minded.
 An affair of wooing ana wedding is the chief factor in Meyer and Son." though. and the progress of 1t Is mark ed by no surprises. Junior Meyer has none of his fathers Polish accent, and not much of his Jewish orthodoxy; and he gets to sweethearting with Majof Gray's daughter. who isn't af- fected by her parents racial prejudice against her marrying an Israelite. They are simply a new Romeo and Juliet yas to family restraint, and American loving pair with hating I guess. after all. that the author is a Jew: yet may be he Is q overriding his wish to bc equitable for he makes Junior Meyer too good to live, or at least to thrive. in a modernly human and reasonably selfish community. Junior Gray is of the worst sort and foul insulter of Junior Meyer: but when a check for $1.000 forged by Gray comes into Meyers hands. he buys It out of his own pocket and burns t. so /as to save his sweetheart from annoyance through her scailiwaS bro- ther's crime.
 Gray has fooled with e manicure girl when a oollegian in New York: she comes to the midwest to scare him into marriage; whereupon Meyer pur- chases her silence at t2.0o0. so that' a suit for breach of promise may not shame the sister. Then. again. when the manicurist. to show her gratituoe to Meyer, gives him a snug hug and smacking kiss his sweetheart sees 1t: and lest a nexplanation shall shame her with a brothers scandal. Meyer let's her go on believing that he is the paramour. Heaven save a girl from so self-sacriAcing a lover. thought Some others in the theatre took 1t in fun and laughed. They seemed to regard him as ailing mentally with a monomania for defaming himself, anu declined to go with him sedately in SC needless an arrangement from his love-lady. Less suddenly than "A Wo. man of Impulse" yet as irretrievably "Meyer and Son" broke to pieces IT ridicule.
 Why give space to a futile play? Be- cause Its plan andsscope are Tar oet- ter than its ways and means. Fer sons think out loud in 1t and other persons overhear them. Plottsrs pay no heei to visible eavesdroppers. Not one visitor is announced before enter k. and an intrusive politician walk righ' in. but the Gray girl saunters casuaif. into the Meyer fellows apartment without warning, and other memberi of the scrappy Gray and Meyer fami' lies drop in unbidden and unheraldet whenever they feel like @ quarrel oi a fight Nevertheless. crudities don mullify all of the force of this ethica or ethnological composition. Hebrai' al, fnt nf iigion are decianed vigorously along with a similarly obdurate American anti-Semitic bias; and one hopes tha the author has had the bravery t! bring his play to some kind of { vigorous conclusion. He almost doe 1t courageously but slumps cowardly Is he afraid of the Jewish portions O. his audiences? It looks so: for h. doesn't plant his sweethearts on stiff legs for defiant marriage and parent be blowed. Nor does he brace th' spines of the fathers to make then stand up unbendingly for their con vfctions
 All peter out weakly. Junior Meye says he will be tickled almost to deatl if Grille Gray marries him-but h. will rather choose misery than b, an apostate Jew. Grille Gray say she will all but die of joy to become Mrs Meyer-but she will choose to b. a joyless old maid if the Senior Meye
 refuses to approve. Senior Meyer say he will be delighted to bless them Il both a church and a synagogue-i | Senior Gray, too. will withdraw al disapproval. Senior Gray says he will tacitly countenance the wedding-lf h l isn't asked to be any more explici | about 1t than Senior Meyer.
 Love shall not be paramount t
 duty" says the Jewish bachelor | Duty must dominate love-" says tn
 Christian maiden.
 Then 1t looks / for a moment a though there will be logical thoug
 unhappy climax. But the author, find
 ing himself 'twlxt the two chairs Q
 Jewish and Christian prejudice. let
 himself bump on the ground with thi
 tag:
 We will wait" says he.
 we will hopei" says she.
 The naive yet saucy Marie Doro ha
 travelled six months with "rhe Rich
 est Gfri:" and New York Is the end c
 the tour instead of the beginning; 6
 neither she as a star actress nor tn
 provides a new topic. Still. it gave
 first night" to Marie and the con,
 pany as we'll as to the audience. Mig
 two hundred times had the piece bee
 performed in over thirty cities; ye the players were visibly at a nervou 4 tension upon facing their Broadway aC
 quaintances. Why do actors regar New York first-nighters as enemie Keen to condemn when for fact the
 are-friends eager to approve7 Tn
 mistake comes of a vanity which make
 cism and accept nothing but fulsom hattAry