The Washington herald., 1913-12-21
BY JAMES $. METCALFE.

"S S5AAE1S - hETCALFEs
New York. Dec. 2O.-It needs no Shake
spearean injunction this week to BE
brief; be brief; evermore be brief" The
managers have taken care Of that They
have such a holy horror of the week
before Christmas and the expenditures
the season entails that they limit every
chance and curtail every expenditure, in
some cases going so far as to cut in two
the salaries of their artists as an alterna-
tive to being laid of altogether.
. Forbes RObertsOn's otheIIo.
In New York the fatal week is marked
by only one new production and by
dearth of theatrical news. Therefore,
Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson first
American appearance in "Othello" gets
very liberal amount of newspaper space,
much of it devoted to a severe stating.
modified in tone and with an indulgence
que to the great personal respect in which
the actor-manager is held as man and
an artist.
, ''Othello' as an acted play is unfamiliar
to the great mass of American theater-
gNers. Many of those who may be ac-
quainted with it by reading and allusion
may be surprised when they stop to ask
themselves whether they have ever seen
it on the stage. Mantell occasionally
plays 1t in his repertoire, but since the
days CT Booth and Salvini there have
been few actors who have cared to essay
either the Othello or Iago chosen by the
star for his own work. Perhaps one rea-
son is that in the acting of Othello be-
fore a modern audience the mechanics
Of the play creak horribly. In plot it is
almost modern melodrama; in handling
it resorts TO the oldest and most obvious
conventions of the stage. To any one
who knows anything Of violent deaths,
to the physician in particular, the famous
smOthering scene and the death of Othel-
10 by his own hand are absurd almost to
the point of robbing the last act of its
tragedy. 1t is a monument to the genius
cf Shapespeare that in this day of general
knowledge the revival of Desdemona from
her smothering to utter few we'll
chosen remarks does not bring laughter
instead of being accepted with the re-
spectful silence that goes with conviction
and credibility. Certainly no modern
Ciamatist would dare fly SO in the face
of possibility.
Bad Presentation.
The settings of "Othello' as given by
Forbes-Robertson might once have been
tsnposing. Now they have much the ef-
feet of clothing so much worn and often
cleaned that it has become limp and lost
its texture. We have become SO accus-
toned to lavishness of production that,
little critical as we are of artistic values
and harmonies and of historical accu-
TaCy, we resent such shabbiness as isl
here shown.
The same fault may justly be found
with the supporting company inI
"Othello." The star system. in the old
sense when the star was everything and |
nothing else mattered, has been so long
discredited in this country that Forbes |
Robertson imperils his own reputation
when he brings us back so nearly to the |
old conditions. Almost every member
seems to regard locution as a useless
equipment of the actor. We of course eX-
Ipect the English intonation in an Eng
lish company, but that expectation does
not include a complete muffiing and in
distinctness of very many Important
speeches. The Booth Theater is not
large one, but it is not exaggerating to
say that almost half he lines spoken by
the subordinate characters were COM
pletely lost by those sitting more than
q half-dozen rows from the footlights.
Gertrude Elliott as DesdemOna was
free from this reproach. She spoke her
lin distinctly, almost too mechanically
so. but the sweetness of the character
lost nothing in her Interpretation even if
she gave it no depth or moving qualities
But the play of ''Othello' with an inef-t
fective Iago is almost to be made as
,proveTbial as Hamlet with the Hamlet
left out Mr.. CookSon, who had this most
important role, played it with almost as
much hnesse and subtlety as hotel
clerk welcoming an obscure guest The
Cassie happened to be good-Iooking and
of manly bearing. but he. like practically
all Of the others, obliterated his speeches
and in acting was most mechanical.
The knights Own Work.
Forbes-Robertsons Othello will never
rank with that of the famous interpreters
of this incarnation of the sufferings and
unreasOn Of jealousy. He is physically
and temperamentally untitled for the
part. so much so that it is a cause of
wonderment to his admirers that on
artistic grounds he did not elect to play
Iago. OF course the Moor outranks the
other in appeal to the audiences SYM
pathies and liking, but IagO is the more
intellectual part even if in lower plane
81 humanity and Forbes Robertson is
nothing if not an Intellectual actor.
In the calmer and tender passages