The Denver Jewish news., 1920-01-14
MONTAGUE GLASS AND JULES
ECKERT GOODMAN
Mr.. and Mrs. Abe Potash in New
Play,

MI. ana MIS-. AUe IolusH--bdTHeS
Bernard and Mathilde Cottrelly, as
ever was-were welcomed back to town
last evening, when new play thrown
together by Montague Glass and Jules
Eckert Goodman served as an excuse
for another delightful evening with Mr.
Bernard, another hilarious evening
with one of the finest and most en-
gaging characterizations of the mod
ern stage.
For some six or seven years now
Mr. Bernard has been playing Abe
Potash, playing the character with i'm
neasurably more understanding and
skill than the actor at whose perform
ance London has rocked with such
contented laughter, playing it in plays
of varying titles and framework, play
ing it better and better each season,
till now it stands with Mr.. warfield's
Music Master and Mr.. Bacon's Light
min Bill, and makes the old folks ram
ole on about Joe Jefferson. 1t is so
fine, so authentic, and so altogether
delightful a piece of portraiture that
you fairly yearn for the day when
some one will write for him mellow
comedy as rich and gentle and ap-
preciative as his acting deserves.
The new play is called His Honor
Abe Potash which means that Mr..
Glass has written another play about
lovable, choleric, middle-aged Jew
ish merchant and named him Potash,
ms any owner Of familiar and highly
marketable article is wont to affiX the
trademark. Perlmutter has vanished
unexplained into space, the cloak and
suit business is nowhere in evidence,
Gnd the scene is shifted TO small city
in this state, unknown TO the Blue
Book, but known to the prompt book
with the previous plays except as a
continuance of that extraordinarily
amusing stage marriage-the union be-
tween Barney Bernard and Nine. Cot
trelly.
Now, as the title indicates, Abe runs
for Mayor of Damascus and is elected,
to the subsequent discontinue of the
ring, which had thought he would be
IIiable. Abe is bit different about
taking office, realizing now little he
knows about, Mayorihg, but he does
enjoy specuiating on what he can do
to them loafers, the police, and 1t does
give him courage to remember that
New York and Chicago look what kind
Of Mayors they got. There comes u
trying hour when, in order to make him
ipdorse their big park grab, they buy
mp Abe's notes at the bank and frame
up Abe's son till it looks as tho the
boy would have to go to jail. Abe is
adamant in stirring Board of Esti-
mate meeting, which Mr.. Goodman has
kindly arranged for Mrs. Potash and
Irma Potash and Irma Potash's gentle
man friend, and everybody to attend.
Abe commits his own boy to Jail.
You pretend to be a father, walls
Mrs. Potash, and yet you call your own
son a defendant. What do you think
you are-king Lear or something?
Thus again and again does Mr.. Glass
drop the saving salt of his humor on
the tail of his collaborator's melo-
dramatic flights. Then the scene be-
comes quite unexpectedly solemn and
the great rich Jew of the town pro-
claims:
Mr.. Potash. l honor you. You are
here, not merely as Mayor, but the
defender of the good name of your
race. 1 honor you for your courage
and your sacrifice, and l envy you
your opportunity to do this great thing
for your people
But trust Abe to save the situation
He lifts his bowed and furrowed head
long enough to mutter:
III shenk it to you
1t should not be thot because Mr.
Bernard is so amazingly good that no
one else is any good at all. OF course,
Nine. Cottrelly is excellent. She al
ways is And some particularly val
liable assistance is given by Robert
Cummings and George Barnum.
Lucille English and James Spots
wood come on from time to time to
deliver the love interest the play
wrights seem to think essential, IL
does look at one time as If their en-
gagement would not come off.
"A nice thing it would look says
Abe scornfully. The papers they
could say: "Mr Abe Potash Is hap
py to announce that his daughter lrma
is engaged to George Block and that
his son Harry is in jail. New York
Times.