New-York tribune., 1921-09-21
The New Play
By Percy Hammond
Mr.. Skinner, i'm ssBlood and
Sand,' Pictures Eloquent.
ly the Ups and Downs of
a Bullfightcr's Career

in reading of Mr.. lbanez's forlorn bull
fighter and his troubles with sex ant
the heating waters you may be doubly
so in seeing him impersonated by Mr.
Otis Skinner at the Empire.
| Here is another'role in harmony will
Mr., Skinner's bounteous histrionism
| the eminent Spanish arena man, wht
swoops with graceful gestures from
mood to mood and from emotion ts
emotion, filling the eye and the eal
with the picture and melody common
to romantic Spaniards i'll the drama
Not for long time has the actor hat
so abundant an opportunity to exhibi'
the ample range of his talents; and il
"Blood and Sand" does not make the
grade as popular entertainment, Mr.
SINNERS capacious exhibition will, nc
doubt, entrance his multitude.
X X X
Mr.. SINNERS duties in the play are
manifold. First he displays himself as
the gladiator in the height Of his PROV
Sss. preparing to go forth to battle
with the bulls. The result of Mr.
Skinner's study of the life and man.
ners of the Spanish athletes is here
disclosed, and he shows you many in
innate details of the process of prep
aration. You see him with his rapt
and lowly wife (Miss Madeline Del
MARI romping with his children and
throwing pennies to the adoring crowd
beneath his balcony. You see him
tremble at the superstitious signs of
evil, and you hear him express his
fears that some day the bulls will get
him, which they do.
He shows you himself at the apex of
his popularity, when the pernicious and
beautiful Dona Sol (Miss Catherine CAL
vert) pays him the tribute of visit.
and straightway gets into his veins.
He takes you with him to her salon and
gives you becomingly reticent view of
bull-fghter in drawing room. per-
forming the comic errors usual to such
situation. And then, when things
seem to be tagging bit, he encom-
passes the seductive lady in his arms,
kisses her inflammably, and causes her
to make love to him. She calls him
"My beast" "My beautiful animal" and
likens him to bull and stallion. You
have further insight into the doubtful
character of this Andalusian Salome
when she seems disappointed at his
confession that he has never killed one
Of his fellow men,
You can scarcely believe that an
actor of Mr.. SINNERS affluent ap-
proximations could act a scene so
realistically that it caused member
of the audience to swoon. Yet so it
was, for when the bull-fghter, wounded
in contest, removed the bandages
from his hurt leg, he did so with such
punctilious minutia that one of those
present tainted at the spectacle At
the time the hero, fearing to be forgot
by his evil sweetheart, was anxious to
get back to work, and he was hasten
ing to Madreed, there to engage the
british beasts in conflict. He went
away, gayly limping on the arm of his
assistant, shouting farewells to his non
plussed family.
Stirring scenes ensue in the latter
part of the play. Mr.. Skinner, his
nerve gone and driven to drink by the
cruelty of Dona Sol, penetrates her
residence, and among other eccentric
actions, shoots up BULBS head, one of
the mural ornaments of the place. The
versatile Dona Sol has deserted him for
a poet and he is drunk and desperate.
1t remains to be said, in the leisure
moments that exist between now and
press-time, that Mr.. Skinner in the end
is killed by one of his bovine adver-
saries, and that he dies, mistaking his
faithful wife, who is by his side, for
the woman who has done him wrong.
X !. 4
Miss Calvert is beautiful as the de-
cadent vampire of the exercises, and
she looks as if she might have stepped
from the walls Of the Prado. A pleas
ant and an interesting interlude of the
performance was the debut of Miss
Cornelia Otis Skinner, in wisp of a
role, which she distinguished with
much quiet charm and authority and
which she decorated by singing in
pretty voice some attractive music that
was described as twelfth century
canticle. The dramatization was made
by Tom Cushing, and it is orderly,
literate and thoroughly worthy of it's
source.