The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-09-26
New Plays in New York
 Are Taken iron, Book CoUers

her repulsion of the infatuated young poet: and her first meeting with the homeless orphan. In the sec"ai sse las received word that her W ruthless. e uel husband. has at fast died in Paris. leaving her free to become Lloyd's wife. The climax Is the most awkward scene of the play commins- ling the suicide of the rejected poet. the receipt of Lloyd's letter refusing to marry Helena. and the first mixing to staid old Chester of her true posi- ton In such a way as 70 be confused and ineffectiye.
 But the third act more than makes up for the falling off. It you'd be diff ficult to separate the aetiag from the substance of the play; and It would be hard to say just how much both gain by the beauty. the perfection of detail of the production. The sct IS Jielena's meeting with Lloyd-her demand that he marry her, his professel willing ness to do SO. and finally ms subrer- fuge of saving she must give up the boy David if she does so. The culmin- , ating scene is so similar in design to the moving climax of Mrs. Dane's De- fense" as to preclude the possibility O. coincidence. Here--as there---we have the distracted woman cross-examined by the kindly disposed but firm, pene- trating old man. pr. Layenuar, ttnai favorite character who nguree in s" many of Mrs. Deland's storI.s) p.nbes into the womans life to see IT she IS fit to rear little David. She pleeoa evades, lies, finally tells the whole pit. fable story of her life. At last, she sees the right, and voluntarily gives Up the child. It is a scene or intense 'h- terest and of the most moving. senu- inc, unmaudlin pathos. Anh 1t enable' Miss Anglin to crown a pe"ror'rance ot rare and subtle skill with an exhio!- tion which moves the keenest aEd laos' naive critic to the highest pitch of en- thusiasm.
 When Sully Prudhomme, the French poet, died recently. some one spoke or him as more admired than read. Is not the same phrase considerably applicable to our own Edgar Allen Poe? What average of the American legion who protest Poe's greatness, do you suppose, really known more of his poetry than "The Raven and "Annibel Lee" or has read more than the names of his stories other than, say, rhe Murders fin the Rue Morgue," and "The system of Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather" A representative New York audience, seeing the first performances of "The Tell-Tale Heart" showed no evidence of familiarity with the Poe tale. If the people had been acquaint- ed with it, they hardly could have followed the one-act play so breath lessly For the new piece is little more than a recital of the five-page story by Poe. To say that is no dis engagement of Robert B. kegerreis, who formed the drama with scissors and paste, and who acted the chief role-one might almost say the only role. To have tried to improve upon the Poe form would have been to see stupidly. to say the least.
 Remembering the narrative I went expecting to see the murder of the helpless old man enacted in all of it's horror. But MT. Kegerreis had read his Poe so well as to quite realize how much greater is suggestion than visible enactment. He begins his play just after the deranged servant has killed his old master and hidden the body under three loose boards of the bed room floor. The front door bell rings It Is the police, made suspicious by the death cry of the victim. The mur- derer. insanely confident that all trace of his crime Is hidden, brings them to the very scene of the outrage. He tells them his master has gone to the country; there are no tell-tale evil HCI COIilil6uCSS the beating of the tell-tale heart. Do you remenn- Der how 1t was the poor old mans heart thumps that both led to the crime and the confession of 1t? The servant used to come nightly to the room and leer at his master sleeping in his bed. One night the sleeper awoke, and as he lay rigid, dumb with terror, his heart-beats were the only sound in the stiffness. The humping infuriated the lunatic, But as we see him sitting above the hidden corpse the sound of the frightened heart comes to him from the dead, terroriz- ing him to a voluntary confession.
 We have had & play of mystery within our midst. The notion got about that the curious need not walt for the opening of the pretentious New Theatre to get a view of one of the novelties announced for early produce ton within it's architecturally impres. sive walls. At a cut-rate playhouse in Brooklyn. a repertory stock com. pany introduced itself in an unheard- of comedy called "A Royal Runaway |"