The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1910-05-15

lie into the gaietieS of Gotham. with
her village sweetheart changed to
town millionaire, who owns a depart
ment store for her to turn into pan
demonium, a yacht for her to sail
away in and an airship 10 fly back
home in. Marie DRESSER occupies the
center of the stage much of the even
ing and spreads considerable way to-
wards its circumference. She is a
coarse artistic, but never crude; and
her depletion of NAL de mer relieved
by dipsomania-SeaS aboard
the yacht merging into a champagne
Jag-is an example of real dramatic
art soused thoroughly to suit the taste
of the Tenderloin. Yet the rack show
isn't vicious in its Dresslerity
The art of pantOmime is a fake con-
siderably. Did you ever see a play of
silent motion that didn't have
scenario printed in the Program
, Otherwise you wouldn't have known
what it was about. 1t is false pre-
tense that a story can be told in dumb
show UNDERSTANDABLE to people not
previously informed of at least the
gist of it. Your grandfather may saw
there used to be pantomimists so ex-
pressive in action that they made
characters eloquent and intricate plots
comprehensive without the utterance
Of word The old gentleman's mem
DRY is fooling him. l saw the famous
Ravels. Believe me- they had to be
helped out by playbills.
However. and although the story of
the new pantomimic drama, La So
nambUie," is in the program, the pur-
port and purpose of the show-the
reason and the meaning-are made
clear by Nina Payne without an ex-
PLANTATION or synopsis. And Nina is not
| technically much of a dumb-show girl
either Her beauty is uncommonly
mobile, though, throughout her entire
length of sixteen feet In that metn-
tai measurement of her corporal
distances, 1 reckon her arms and legs
separately, to the tips of her longest
/ fingers and biggest toes; for her limbs
are marvels of graceful activity
What Nina's pantomime is meant to
| express is novelty in immodesty The
theatres of the world have. as you
know, been invaded by undressed
dancers, generally American women,
who began with Salome in religious
pretense, passed into a semblance of
] Greek art and gained a vogue even
among people not usually tolerant of
nudity on the stage. Now Nina utilities
somnambulism.
Wife's Birthday Supper
La Sonambule'' introduces eight
persons at a wife's birthday supper.
They dance in original ways under the
exhiliration of wine. A tipsy rake
sneaks back, after the other guests
have gone, gets into the hostess bed
room, is dragged out by her husband
and the men in their fight roll down a
| long stairway. That's about all
Except that the rake, just before his
overt offense, sees the wife walk down
those stairs in her sleep and dance
somnambulistically. A seven-syllable
work is due to her exploit. She is clad
only in night gown, slippers and
very Intimately a Silken fabric meant
to be regarded as her skin. This coun-
terfeit cuticle is too pink TO be true,
unless it be assumed that she is blush
ing all over, as she ought to. The gown
is white and so very sleazy that, the
tights underneath being bright in hue
| for that purpose, her figure shows
plainly through the gauzy outer en-
velope as she poses by herself. or
waltzeS wildly in her mimic husbands
arms.
1t was Nina's luck, at her third per-
formance-the one L S2w-tO get by
accident thousands of dollars worth Of
publicity at the cost of burned sleeve,
a scorched wig and a blistered arm.
She had emerged from her bedroom in
/ the sleepWalking incident, tumbled
down the stairway without waking.
done ''ia danse de la robe de mutt" and
picked up llSnteQ candle ike Lady
! Macbeth, when her mass of loose hair
| caught fire. Il was SO manifestly a
| genuine accident that the newspapers
far and wide told, next day, how the
blaze made the people panicky and
she put it out by rolling on the floor.
Whenever play a quarter of a CEN
tury dead is brought TO robust life,
don't call ii a miracle, but look for a
natural explanation You will find it,
usually, in some one very vital scene.
/ Here is Jim the Penman The
younger generation knows it only as a
successful drama of the middle SOS.
but when the older calls ii to nina
1 Agnes Booth is the figure that stands
cut brilliantly foremost The passage
lin which a wife slowly comes to know
/ that her husband is a forger probably
is as effective as any of is sort ever
] written in q play, and our American