The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-17
IS CHANTECLER FORGOTTEN?
A HORRIBLE EXAMPLE. '"The tallest soldier in the British army

Paul Scott Mowrer, in the Chicago News. ARIS-WhiIe the American footlights were blazing for the first time on | the furred and feathered world of Edmond Rostand's 'Chantecler," Paris, with it's customary nonchalance, was for getting that 1t ever went rooster mad.
 There has been no revival of the piece here this season, nor does 1t seem likely if one may judge by the cackle one hears in the fashionable barnyards-that 1t will be seen on the stage of the French capital for a good many years to come. The "Chantecler' novelties have disap- peared from the windows of the shops. The very name "Chantecler," if 1t chances to be uttered, echoes strangely in salon or tearoom. For Paris has passed judgment; it has heard all the evidence in the case of what has been called the most sensa- tional production of a century, and has summarized its verdict in two short sen tences: "Chantecler" is not convincing. It defeats it's own end.
 This criticism in no way applies to the book of the play. Thanks to centuries of training in art and literature, French taste is in no danger of mistaking lit erary masterpiece. You have only to begin to read those magic pages to lose yourself quite in that intangible charm which is the mark of lasting literature. Yes, you are actually there, in the barn. yard the hens are clucking as they stroll about with that ridiculous gait of theirs; the blackbird is fidgeting in his cage; the cat is sleeping on the wall the bees are humming in the heavy and fragrant air of summer. Nothing lacks. The enchant- ment is complete.
 Just here begins the difficulty. Left to itself, it is easy for the imagination to believe, with Rostand, that man, in leading, does not take with him all the drama" that lone can laugh and suffer without him." That is idealism, and of an old and beautiful kind. But when the rise of the curtain reveals the stage of a theatre, set to represent barnyard as it would look from the point of view of a rooster F inches high, that is real ism, purely, simply realism; and the mind, accepting implicitly the terms of an unspoken agreement demands that throughout the succeeding scenes this IcdllSiIl Do dUoOlutciy SoiayihSih6'
 What, then, is the effect when your expectant eye alights on crowd of hen like creatures walking about, not with the ridiculous wag of hens, but with the familiar step of women? To be sure, they are garbed in feathers something like hens, but they do not carry them selves like hens; they are too upright; they never peck; and there, just under their peaks, where their throats ought to be, are enthusiastically the features Of women. You are reminded of the god on the Alaskan totem pole who has not only a face on his head, but a face to his chest and another to his stomach as well; and though your good will be the best in the world your mind unconsciously balks Nor is your plight bettered when the play proceeding, presents to your gaze a roos- ter, a biackbird, a peacock. an owl, a hunting dog, carrier pigeon. spaniel a turkey, a cat and guinea pig-all the same size.
 When you read the book 1t was actually the sonorous droning of the bees that you heard: the words attributed to the in- sects seemed merely the perfect interpre- tation of all the droning sought to say But what does the stage give you? Plain human voices talking English or French, as the case may bel You may be willing to grant that bee can talk as well as a hen or dog, but you will have to ad- init that it cannot talk with the same music that charms you in its hum. And when Chantecler 50 magnifcently hymns the sun or when he makes that noble vow-so moving in the reading-to return to his own work whatever tho cost. how much of the golden poetry of his words Is lost because you happen to sec those same words coming not from a roosters wide spread beak. as you had imagined. but from the mouth of a human whose face Is plainly visible where the rippling sbrome of the rooster's throat ought to bs7