New-York tribune., 1918-06-07
Drama
New Hitchcock Show Not
Yet Sufficiently Easy
in Its Mood
By Haywood Broun


Raymond Hitchcocks new show has
not yet been moulded and pounded and
hammered into 3 sufficiently casual
mood. 1t will be better and more ex-
temporaneous after more work has
peen put upon it. Effort is too visible
IN much of the fun n-making.
On the whole, the materials which
go to make up the show are not used to
the best advantage. For instance,
'Madelon," the great French marching
song, is introduced for the first time in
an american theatre. This is u song
"hlch keeps the poilus stepping the
rfst miles and the last ones. 1t has all
the swing of an army on the march. In
hltchy koo" it is introduced as the
oeginnlng of number sung by Irene
bordonl. With some male voices for
the chorus and a little more brass
Madelon' should sweep an audience
along as "ripperary" did in the first
days. Mr.. Hitchcock should have it in
Ehgilsh, so that even US one-language
rolk might hear of the soldiers girl
who wasn't too severe if one of the
po'lus stole kiss or two, and about
the corporal who went courting Made
lon' and all the rest of it. "She laughs
us up to love and life and God. Made
Ion! Madelon! Madelonl"
me performer who made the
strongest appeal last night had to rise
out OF welter of dulness in her par
ticulsr scene. There was ever SO much
dreary posturing in the Arabian night
scene until Florence O'Denishawn came
on and danced with splendid grace and
splrit: The number was a very colon in
It's effect on the progress of the show.
me new "Hitchy Koo" begins as an
old old- fashioned comic opera, entitled
The Miller's Daughter" with bandits
ana villagers and everything. This is
Drought to stop when Hitchcock OBJ
serves a tenor singing under the win
dow OF the heroine. He ascertains
that they. are to be married in the last
act, despite parental objection, and so
ne complains that the singing is un-
necessary. Declaring that he will have
none Of the production, Hitchcock
orders the curtain down, and the show
then proceeds along less carefully
routed lines.
number of burlesques are in
troduced: In the funniest one Hitch
cock is the wickedest man in Flatbush,
and Ray Dooley a small baby, who
keeps lnterrupting one of his hirta-
tlons. At such times as the baby be-
gins to howl, Hitchcock quiets her by
hitting her briskly over the head with
a stuffed club. This is interesting. Of
course, the method is worth trying,
put we doubt whether it will prove to
be efficient.
Another sufficiently amusing skit
concerns Jack Rancid, the sheriff. This
is a Western piece in which everybody
IS killed. There is also scene in a
frehouse, with a capital war song, en-
titled ut Will All End Up With the
Right End Up" The number did not
seem to make any great appeal, and
the fault probably lay in the manner
in which it was staged Quite the rag
ensemble numbers. The programme
boasts "a chorus of forty under
twenty" We would not object if the
young ladies were even as old as
thirty if there had been fewer of them.
They seemed to clutter up things to
such an extent last night All are per-
sonable, to be sure but there is no
truth whatsoever in the theory that
II ten beautiful girls are attractive
twenty are just as fascinating. Indeed
the rule seems to work in precisely
the opposite direction
Irene Bordoni was a delightful mem
Der of the company. We missed a
word here and there when she sang
in French, but we never muffed a ges-
ture. One of her best songs was a
French translation of Cover There /"
which came as the climax of the Made
Ion number.
Leon Enrol did an amusing drunken
skit with Ray Doolev, which was al
most Keystone comedy in the extent
OF its depredations upon china and wa
ter pipes and vegetables and dough
Fight with food" seemed to be the
motto adopted for the skit. We love
to see people fall about and get hit
with things, and all that, but we are
not Unsuitable, and there was too much
rough and tumble in the second act of
"Hltchy-Koo." Roy Cummings, for in
stance, was amusing when he first be.
gan to tumble up against the curtain,
but long before he had done we wished
that, the scenery might retaliate upon
HIM IN some effective way. His war
song with its comic introduction was
IN scandalously bad taste, and some
one ought to tell him so. There was
also number called a golf dance.
"Hitchy Koo" has excellent possibli
les, but it will be a better show after
the harrow or the spade or the prun
ing hook, or whatever it is that sepa-
rates the wheat from the tares. is
turned on.