Evening star., 1912-11-05

The mounting of the first and last
scene. for they are the same, is i'm
pressively romantic, and that of the
second. attractively adequate, while the
costumes are pleasing to the eye.
Belasco.
''Kindling" in which Margaret Illington
appeared at the Belasco Theater last
night, is sociological tenement house
problem set about with stage effects and
draped in gloom. The humanity of Mag
gle Schultz, played by the star, is in
tense; the tenement house woman in her
cry from the depths that her unborn
child shall be given a. fair chance leaves
the impression of a gripping story. In
this one element "kindling'' partakes of
the elements of greatness-in spots.
Maggie Schultz appeals because Mar
garet Ellington depicts the strongest in
stinct in all human nature, the parental
instinct
'kindling' is shown in a tenement
room, meant to represent an ideal breed
ing ground for consumption. The main
people of the story are the gray-lived
kind, units of the mass to whom a stop
page in the days pay means an instant
cessation of food. They are meant to be
the people in whose eyes there is no
CLEAN of hope, who have no chance and
to whom the uplfters from 5th avenue in
opera cloakS are as curious messengers
from another planet where the laws of
man and nature are different and incom-
prehensible: They are of the underworld
with not even the excitement of intelli-
gence in their misdeeds
With this background Charles Kenyon
has written three acts to tell of Maggie
and her stevedore husband. Heinie Schultz,
played by Byron Beasley. His days are
spent In trundling barrels and cases on
and off the big steamers lying at New
York docks. He starts the story by tell
ing IN brutal frankness that the child
which is to be born to her would do well
to die at birth, and with that doleful be-
ginning, the play rolls on with tears accu-
mulating abundantly until the last five
minutes. In that space of time, by a
great amount of fixing up the clouds
are lifted and the audience is left to say
that all is happy forever afterward.
Maggie voices great mother sentiment
when she demands that the child shall be
born with a chance. With this one ambi-
ton she dscards all others and to &C
complish it she allows herself to become
thief, to be the inside partner in a
yeggman's successful attempt to rifle
rich house. The ease with which she
succumbs to the temptation, that she may
have the few dollars necessary to take
her and Heine to a homestead farm in
the open west, where her child may have
the hoped-for chance, is indeed pitiable.
ALI hd6Sic SdS anu uOeS Is human anu
heartbreaking, and Margaret Ellington
| shows she is well equipped for deep emo
ton
Because "Kindling' is more of socio-
logical study than play. the tenement
people do not speak exactly as tenement
folks do 1t lacks in many instances the
close imitation of the original type. The
words in the mouths of the stevedore
Schultz are not those you hear from a
real stevedore: and the Irish wash
woman. Mrs. Bates played we'll by Ida
Lewis. is trifle too epigrammatic for
the tenementS.
The sociology and the humanity are in
teresting The play tells the same story
that the tables and statistics of congresses
on hygiene and demography tell every
year; and shows remarkable way to
solve the problem. After Maggie has be-
come yegg, facing the opportunity to
have her child born in prison, the family
she robs forgives her in the face of her
despairing plea, and the supposition Is
that the child will be born in Wyoming.
Two bits shine brightly in KIN
ding" These are Steve Bates. played by
Malcolm Duncan. and Rafferty,, plain
clothes policeman. by Frank Z. Camp.
They are lkenesses in every way.