New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-09-16
AND ALL OUR YESTERDAYS.


to take it and them back to the land
Of the Bronx cocktail and the pale,
pale dawn. One Of these is provided
for the action Of the play, which comes
OF as scheduled. The young woman
is hustled TO the Twentieth Century
Express and duly domiciled in villa
by the sea, paid for out of bonds from
her own stronghold. The villa is peo-
pied variously by cads, Founders,
snobs, the demi-mondaine, and all the
crew that goes along with atmosphere
Of this kind. So far. good. The young
woman's mother sends family cousin
along East to rescue the endangered
child who, after much ado, does. There
are several things which several per-
sens have found wrong with the play,
but these may be allowed to remain
undisturbed in the grave Of the criti-
cal past. They are unimportant any
way beside this one fact. The gang
which the country cousin runs up
against in her adventure into the land
where people dress for dinner is such
pitifully weak and devitalized COM
pany that the prospective fun tapers
out into nothing. Several people, |
believe, have found fault with the
country cousin because she is insult
ing. As for myself it Is one point
where I begin to have the anticipation
OF pleasure. But the insult does not
boomerang. 1t is like jousting against
mob Of napier mache knighthood.
If / did not know for sure that Mr..
Street and Mr.. Harrington were both
gentlemen of humane instincts / should
accuse them of cruelty, Of fsthering a
purposely weak progeny, just to get
the pleasure of seeing Miss Alexandra
Carlisle's country cousin nightly bear
them 10 the ground and deliver the
death blow, forever Impaired.
DUT there's still another side to the
- matter that Mr.. Street seems to
have ignored. The problem that the
stage is always up against is the prob
lem of making an audience believe for
some few hours that the thing 1t sees
before it is life. 1t may not be life;
it turns out in most cases it is about
seventy ways removed from life. There
nay even be an added flavor to the en-
tertainment when the audience can
balance its subconscious knowledge
that it isn't life with the desire to be-
lieve for the moment that it is. There
in resides the fun of farce and melo-
drama. But to create the stupendous
illusion that the machinery of exist
ence is actually ticking it off right
there, with the works exposed on a
box-like place called stage, it is
necessary to pick up whatever general
facts occur in the plot and make them
as vital and particular as possible. And
what Mr.. Street and Mr.. Harrington
did was to reverse the process. There
are naughty people in New York, mind
you, plenty of them; but in the aggre-
gate mass Of six millions they occupy
a very small part, so small, indeed,
that they become a particular and
curious class of people, distinguished
from the large rest Of mankind by just
what they are. How. then Is this class
picked up and put into the show works
Of "The Country Cousin? George
Tewsberry Reynolds, Sd, is q typi-
cal George Tewksberry Reynolds, no
more, no less; though the valiant
sweating OF Eugene O'Brien in the part
gives hope every now and then Of
! bringing him TO life and character.
And the rest of them are even worse
eff, being unendowed with the smart
/ lines that fall at times to Mr.. O'Brien.
They remain forever shadowy from
curtain to curtain, always q vague class
Of wicked people, nowhere identified by
the favor of individual evil.
Mr.. Street says there are plenty Of
people in New York like the people of
his play. And the worst Of it is that
there are. Only they would make sorry
lot il they were grabbed out and put
on the stage just that way in a play,
quite as sorry as they are in "The
Country Cousin Imagine the Mrs.
Fiske Of reality Mrs. Fiske really does
have q corporeal existence apart from
the stage, | am told, imagine Mrs.
Fiske of reality transplanted un-
changed to the stage. 1t would be abb
surd. Or imagine Mrs. Fiske's very
special stage manner transplanted and
dissipated in an ordinary drawing room
somewhere. II wouldn't work. 1t
wouldn't work because the stage hap
pens to be the stage and life happens
to be life. Maybe the co-authors got
the two confused.
And speaking Of Mrs. Fiske makes
me wonder what a real deep-dyed yell
low person like Becky Sharp's Marquis
of Steyne would have been able to do
against Miss Carlisle in play like
1.-THE Country Cousin"