The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-08-23
TWEEN WE WERE TWENTY-0NE" AT
 POLES THIS WEEK

When We Were Twenty-one" en- tertained a large audience at Polis last night, with John Ince in the leading role, Dick that competent young nan Allan Dinehart ias "The Imp and Miss Alice Stockwen as Phyllis.
 The play, as to it's staging and production, showed the effects of the highly developed skill of Stage Man ager Oscar Eagle. Scenic effects and lighting left little to be desired and the large cast was extraordinarily per- feet in its business.
 The play is based upon the philo- sophy of men, which perhaps is a. vanishing philosophy, in the face of the modern and insistent demand of women that there shall not be dou- ble standard of morality binding the woman to one line of conduct under social pains and penalties of fearful force, and permitting the man to leave the beaten track and walk with feet in the dew then to be subject only to the mildest penalties.
 In the play we have four old bache- lors. who have reared a boy The Imp" the son of dead comrade These sedate and middle aged men look back upon the life which they led as youths, through the glasses of pleasant recollection. But, occupying the patern1 relation to their ward, they are far from desiring him to the travel the road that they traveled.
 Says the poet,
 Many father have seen,
 "A sober man among his boys,
 Whose youth was full of foolish
 noise"
 And it is in furtherance of suffpa- gette reasoning and the single code, that such fathers are. rarely so proud of their youthful exploits as to desire their pecadilloes perpetuatcd in their own sons.
 But "The Imp takes to the world like duck to water
 Home of a night, when the old fel- lows are assembled he comes, drunk as lord. and babies the story of stantially undraped picture adorns every billboard.
 The plot hinges about the attempt of the old fellows to save him from his infatuatioh. They urge him mot to marry the girl" and the finest scenes of the play hinge about the youngsters ineistence that the woman his experienced guardians are unable to perceive.
 But the scenes that made the hearts of the matinee girls beat faster re- lated to those moments when Phyllis, the girl to whom the boy is engaged, | cial guardian of the Imp, having rear ed him from infancy that not the boy, but he, Dick, is the man her fancy has sought out.
 The boy, just as in the world is quite disllusioned during the course of the action.
 Dick gets the girl, something not quite so certain to happen in real life and the curtain falls for the last time upon one Of the most prolonged bits of ''I Love You" acting that a Bridgeport audience has ever witness ed.
 It is a curious fact about audiences that they will usually endure only a certain amount of rejoicing from an engaged couple Such are expected to say how happy they are and then to pass decorously into the expected retirement of courtship.
 Credit to MT Ince and Miss Stock we'll for the gifts that enabled them to give the audience some four or five minutes Of ''mushy stuff" as Jimmy McFadden would call it, and yet leave nearly everybody yearning for more of the same.
 It is however unfortunate that the author found it necessary to include the quotation around which his play is written with a certain dehcacy not contained in it's source That was a different world in which Thackaray lived and wrote. and the '.wild mistress" of the sentiment re- ferred to is somewhat less frequent now thanks to modern science and careful research into the after math that follows upon too much stair climbing.
 We like the play Its totality of lesson is wholesome. But give us the philosophy of the suffra gette. Surely the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children. But if the fathers sin not then there will be none to go visiting and the expens of engraved cards and cab hire will thus be saved.
 The very faithful work of Arthur Buchanan as "Waddles' should be noted Excellent also. Joseph Holicky, the soldier man" and Adolphe Les tina. as "the doctor" Gentle theatregoers. believe this writer very very seldom is so much given for the money as you get from the Poli stock in When We Were Twenty-one."