New Britain herald., 1919-09-09
LYCEUM PLAYERS
 SCORE BIG SUCCESS
In "The Silent WitneSS'' They
 Prove Their Real Ability
( By Herald HeViewer)


 l-Nceum Players at the matinee yes terday afternoon and last evenings performance was certainly nerited. The manner in which this rompa0y produces this weeks offering, '"rhe Silent Witness," far excells that of any stock company production seen here i'll some time. The settings are good, the company admirably cast and hardly a slip in the lines--.in fact at last evenings performance there
 was but one tiny slip when one mem- Der Of the cast forgot his lines for an Instant but hardly any of the audi ence realized it, so smoothly did the play run.
 The Silent Witness" iG d dra ma of the stirring type, with plenty of thrills and suspense that will please the most discriminating patron of the
 company. It has three acts, with a prologue. In the prologue Helen Hastings later Mrs. Morgan, receives word that the man to whom she is 10 be married shortly, has been killed in big fire. Broken hearted she goes west with a friend after rejecting the hand of a none too honest suitor. The first act takes place 19 years later when the scene opens at a college | campus. Here young Bud Morgan, her son, is working his way in college. gets into Wrangle with Wilbur Vel don, scion of a wealthy family over ! the careless use of a good girls name. and is saved from dismissal from the college, after he has trounced Vel don, by the ki1idly offices of Richard Morgan, prosecuting attorney and candidate for governor. Weldon, however, persists in his Vetbal attacks on young Bud and is detected about to tell Janet Rigsby that his parent age is shrouded in wrong. The boys fight and as the curtain goes down Weldon's dead body is found and Morgan, unDrOtesting, is arrested for the murder.
 Act II. is in Richard Morgnn's l- hrary. He and the assistant district at torney are talking over the murder trial. The. district attorney, Mr. M Mor- gan, insists on giving young Bud a fair trial, maintaining that it is the duty of the district attorney to bring out the truth of every case, while his l assitant works on the belief that the prosecutors job is simply 70 convict Mrs. Morgan, Buds mother comes to make a plea for her son and as the act ends she comes face to face with Prosecutor Morgan, whom she recog- niZeS as the man she loved 19 years before and who is the father of her son. He had been pronounced dead through a case of mistaken identity, but she had never known, and he had thought she had deserted him. The reunion scene is pathetic in the ex- treme and quite sensational.
 In the final act, staged in the dis trict attorneys office, Morgan takes the case from the hands of his assist | ant and by some newly discovered evi- dence, brought in by Janet, succeeds in proving that Bud did not murder Weldon but that during their quarrel the latter slipped and fell crushing his head against the stump of a tree.> The boy is eXonerated, the old lovers reunited and the play made doubly sweet by the fact that Ruth Pelham to whom at the time of the trial Richard Morgan was betrothed says good bye forever hut instead of being filled with wrath, she shakes his hand and Cholling!y wishes him his long lost happiness, concluding with d fare well remark that she is glad he has | proved himself the noble man she al- ways considered him for Eff there's anything harder than losing man one loves, it is seeing him fail in his
 manhood"
 The Silent Witness" is a play that should please local theatergoers and derlVes it's name, as may be assumed, l from the fact that Bud Morgan de- clines to testify regarding the instnu- 1 ations and slurs cast on his mother, 1 explaining to the prosecutor that my mother is a good woman and no one l can say she isn't-and live"
 In thi" weeks play the leading man, 1 George Wellington, has a part far bet l ter than that in which he appeared ! last week, and he handles it in OK l cellent shape. As the polished young ] district attorney and candidate for governor, he makes an ideal appear ance and as the sympathetic man 1 who has had a hard rub himself, he l is excellent. In the reunion scene he l puts enough human emotion into the | acting to make it most genuine, and 1 in the final court scene he rises to 1 heights of masculine emotion thet are l excellent as evidenced by the ap- 1 plausc from the audience and the 1 misses they bring forth directed at the l villain-the assistant district attorney 1 Another member of the cast deserV- | ing much credit this week is Rigsby, | the gardener, played by George My 1 lott. As the simple, honest old garden 1 CT, this player puts sufficient humor l into the play, and in the CrOSS- exam l nation scene handles himself in d way l to reflect credit on himself and estab- l fish faith in the strength of friend- l ship for mankind. Little Marion l Coogan, as Janet, has the first oppor-
 tunity to show her ability at juvenile