New-York tribune., 1918-03-09
Drama
Musical Shows Sticking Close
to Routine Of Our
Daily Grind
BY Haywood Broom


Since ooh, Boy" all musical comedies
have been intimate. The accepted for
mula al present is to take a farce or
light comedy and thrust in few songs.
Beyond question many of these enter
talnments are amusing, but we miss
the old style comic opera On stage
given over to brokers and cloak and
suit merchants and neglected wives and
matrimonial philosophers we need an
evening now and then with emperors,
and cannibal kings, and slave girls, and
fat prime ministers, and executioners
and pirates and such like.
Variety is lacking nowadays. At the
comedy of a Monday we listen to young
folk Of our own time talking through
their noses, and on Tuesday we hear
the same familiar folk singing through
their noses.
Nor IS there any great variety for
the eye. AL week long we see evening
clothes and tennis fanneis and brown
suits with red stripes. The heroine Of
q musical show has only to let down
her skirt a bit and she may step into
any comedy on Broadway. ready from
halr ribbon to slipper to play the young
person who says smart and cutting
things about marriage and accepts the
hero in the last act.
Adventure has departed Our musi-
cal show of to-day is about money In
stead of pirates we have Wall Street
speculators, and nothing more is re-
CURED OF our ims sgination than the ac-
ceptance Of the fact that some gold
mine which sells for less than a dollar
a share actually contains gold. Pres
entity somebody will turn the column
"Outside Securities" into a musical
show by adding a song about moon
and another about an old fashioned
girl. 1t must be admitted that romance
llngers IN the musical numbers, but it
IS obviously i'll at ease in these work
aday settings. Nobody cares much
about the innermost feelings of tenor
IN white tennis fannels.
Are we mover again to have musical
comedies about the folk on the other
side eli the world VINO walk with their
heads downward9 For my part. the
librestlst can go as far as he likes
with the probabilities if lie viii give
me the clatter Of the highwayman on
the great post road, +he tw.nkling
: us o. okIO WIN DoNleS OF Broad
way gcishas or the imperial throne
room Of his highness, the. Sultan OF
SElu. / would even bring back the
chorus Of merry villagers r they would
drive away the young ladies with ten
mis- rackets.
Only one form Of adventure has been
made possible by the infinite musical
comedy The practice of picking out a
chorus girl for critical Comment is a
recent development. / think. There
was no picking them in tic old davs
when they were all sailors or milk
maids, or members Of The imperial hus-
sars, but now each chorus girl has
dress of her very own. The acute re-
porter has no difficulty in remembering
that Mae is the one in brown and that
hathervnn is the fat one in pink with
lilac spots Thus, the spirit Of com
petition is aroused If Mac can kick
three and one half inches HIGHER than
any OF her companions, OF katherynn
IS able to make funny face just before
each exit she will receive d paragraph
ii the threatical notices the next morn
ing, and two years later v hen she is
allowed TO say ooh. Harry won't be
here to-day; he had to 70 in town to
corner the market in Fabricated rub
ber,' Louis Sherwin or Burns Mantle
can thumb back the scrap book and
point out that he discovered she had
talent when she was only a chorus
or ~