The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-28

that same kind of a coddled castaway in the purlieus of Parisian theatrical gaiety. who had a brief term of im- proved behavior, as you will remem- Der. and her final utterance in the French original composition is much like: T quit the dull highway of virtue and go back to the gay byway of vice" That is a logical conclusion of the story. In making version In English. Belasco was mindful of the American popular preference for plays with agreeable endings. So he sent the woman away to penitent seclusion.
 Seven years have brought more con-
 siderate judgment to the upper portion
 of the theatrical public and Mrs. Car
 ter and Miss Oily have marked the
 change with performances of .Zaza." :"
 The Cleopatra death dance, a new
 theatrical excitant, is an elaborated
 pantomime. I have seen 1t at a cost
 of 8 in Broadway, because I had to
 buy a seat of a pejdlar on the side
 walk. and over towards the Bowery.
 in a dime museum for twenty five
 cents the price here being lifted from
 ten by my demand for a front reserved
 seat. Princess Arajah was the Sor-
 ceress of the Nile in one place and
 Princess Amijah in the other; and I
 told that both belong to one Oriental
 troupe which. under last summers
 police censorship at Coney Island. was
 forbidden to give those wiggles and
 waggles that were made known to us
 on the Midway at the Chicago fair and
 repeated on the Pike at St. Louis.
 Where and how the princesses have
 lived during the autumn and half the
 winter I don't know, but they surely
 have spent some of their recent time
 with stage craftsman who. mindful of
 the wane of Salome, devised a suc- cessor in Cleopatra. The new thing
 was shown first at the dime museum
 by Arajah: and then, when she was taken up to Broadway, Amijah took her place down there. The perform ances don't differ much. except that The costlier one is the more beautified. and so that Is the one I will describe"
 Don't dread a repetition of such accounts as I felt bound to give of Salome nudity. Cleopatra wears clothes like an Egyptian lady. Indeed her torso Is not more exposed than that of many a New York lady in a box at the opera: and as to her scanty drapery, the limbs 1t shows when she whirls are stockinged. while those of the highly commended Isadora Duncan in her art exercises are bare. Still. this Cleopatra looks like a resident in torrij zone. It Is hot night on the Nile, and she may have come out of her palace into the courtyard for the solace of music in the open air. for a the first sight of her she Is reclining lazily. while low pipes and faint tom- toms make rythmic sounds and two slaves blow breeze on her with big fans. It is a fine picture in both peopling and painting.
 Cleopatra Is restless. Perhaps the mosquitoes of that period bite her. For a second guess her lowe of the absent Antony makes her uneasy. Then again. her majesty may have had a vision of American dollars. Amy way, she breaks the picture by spring ing up from recumbency and expends some of her loyal excess of exuber- ance. Arajah Is some sort of swarthy Arabian. If not an Egyptian. and hand some enough to stand for the histori- cally voluptuous queen She Is danseuse in the Spanish manner. too, and for five minutes she Is new Car mencita. Suddenly she develops muscle dancing what we call hootchie- cootchie: but she doesn't stand on motionIess feet while wab- bling her hips and shoulders. and throwing her body into tumult of agitation. She combines those move ments with graceful activity of arms and legs This Is no lazy Cleopatra.
 Her majesty is fitful in her moods, too. Her gaiety ceases suddenly. She peers wistfully up and down the Nile. She Is looking for Antony. He has made A date and hasn't kept it. She can't live without him. She will die of vipers sting. A basket Is brought to her. She thrusts in her hands and brings out little snakes that curl and twine around her fingers. Several women hastily quit the theatre; many avert their eyes from the sight; and Cleopatra pretends to be afraid of her handfuls of snakes; but they won't bite her and she filings them back into the basket. Will she now produce an imitation of the his toric asp and place 1t on her breast? No It is a long snake that she next brings out-a yard and a half of wrig gling serpent-not torpid, either, but very wide awake. The men at the pipes and tomtoms in the scene, get noisier; the servitors with the fans are awed, and Cleopatra herself takes on an air of weird terror. And the snake he curls around her naked arms and shoulders. while she grips him far enough back from his head to give him loose use of the business end of him. Several more women get out of she, too, suffers an access of horror. | But in the interest of Egyptian tradi- l ton, not to mention Shakespeare's | play. she must be stung to death by q viper. First. though, she may do q e-cootchie stunt with that | snake. She fondles him though show | ing that he is abhorrent; winds him around her neck. coddles him in her | bare bosom makes circlets of him for | her naked arms. wraps him like a tur- ban around her head: and for a tragic | climax doesn't let him seem to sting | in A kiss. The snake isn't an actor and I don't know by what trick the girl makes him want to put his foul her red lips with something that she gives him the chance. he darts at her mouth. She affects repugnance and terror. Again and again she re- coils from the dreadful kiss that will Kill. And. mind you. she is dancing in a dazed. doped sort of ielirium all this while. and the pipes and tomtoms are excited exceedingly. At last. with a ;pasm of courage, she lets the serpent ouch her lips.
 It is all over except the dying. The ieath throes are terrific. Also they struck me as comic For she went nto such convulsions of muscle danc- on stationary feet this tme. but with every square inch of .wixt neck and hips in violent commo- ion as will make the dancers that I've ever seen from Cairo stand as still in my memory as figures in an Egyptian mural picture. After a