New-York tribune., 1921-02-15
"Peg" Comes Back
And S eem s. the
Same as Ever
Laurette Taylor Has Old
Triumph i'm Her Familiar
Role: Lucille Watson
Scores i'm The White Villa
THE CAST
By Haywood Broun

Never having seen any Of the o1her
1,13s performances of Miss Laurette
Taylor in "Peg o. My Heart" we can't
Theater last night compares with the
piece in it's original run, but we are
willing to take q gamblers chance end
assert that Peg is as good as ever she
was. At any rate, she's all right Just
now.
The play by J. Hartley Manners, for
all the fact that it follows closely in
it's outline the traditional Cinderella
theme, most enduring of all theaIer
stories, has rather fine and rare quail
ity of it's own. This is a somewhat
different Cinderella. Generally, Gin
derella doesn't amount to much until
she gets out of the ashes. She is pretty
abject before she falls under the stlmu-
lating influence of a glass slipper and
a good deal of outside aid, Joy is not
of her own making. But the Cinderella
of Peg, IS played by Laurette Taylor,
has lot Of fun, even in her ash days.
She messes around with the cinders
and pops them into peoples eyes and
does jig step; on the hearth. The
prince needs her deal more than she
needs him. No performer of the year
has brought the same full tide of n'er-
riment to any play as Laurette Taylor
brought to Peg last night.
There are nice strokes and broad
ones, too, in this performance. Some
times it is almost sheer clowning, but
Miss Taylor is good, gay clown. What
rousing Peter Pan she would make!
Under the spell of her. performance
even the original Michael, grown gray
i,,f ba pf wi nd
a mother, to boot, frisked about and
wagged her tail furiously. 1t was
enough to hearten one with the notion
that though we live little lives with
black emptiness all about us, even the
far stars wag a little if you look at
them bit, without hostility OF fear.
And maybe everything does manage to
wag on somehow or other, no matter
what happens. Certainly Peg does.
One thousand one hundred and thirty
nine times has marked no diminution
in the rat-tat-tat with which the old
tale goes.
Of the life members Of the company,
A. E. Matthews is particularly pleas
ing, and Percy Ames. who is a veteran
Of only slightly more than ~ years
standing, and Miss Greta Kemhle
Cooper, practically brand new. help
nightly.
A special matinee under the auspices
of the Players Fellowship brought one
of the most glittering plays of the
season to the Eltinge Theater yester-
day, with the performance of "The
White Villa" adapted farom The DAN
ge1rons Age Of Karen Hiehaelis,, by
lance in the dialogue of the play and
spirit and finish to the work of
Lucille Watson, which almost blind
the spectator to the fact that much of
the story is illogical and still more of
it is unfair. In order to prove and
point out the dangerous age in the life
of woman, Karen Michaelis ships her
heroine off alone, save for her serv-
ants, to a lonely white villa ona little
| island. Then we are expected to be
impressed with the tragedy which
comes to woman through the march of
time.
Stuff and nonsense: this is more
truly the tragedy which comes Of liv-
or other suburban spots. Given the
same circumstances, a dramatist could
! prove that sixteen is dangerous and
! tragic age, or twenty, or anything he
f! pleases up to ninety-six. Nor is he re-
| stricted to one sex. He can prove his
point for all of them.
Again, we never could quite under
stand why the heroine, much in love
with young man, and he equally pas
sionately devoted to- her, promptly
sent him back to town merely in order
to create tragic situation for herself
in the next act To be sure, she point
ed out with some cogency the reasons
why she did not want to marry him,
but both seemed a little lacking in in
vention when they failed even to think
of any other mode of life together
Still, Lucille Watson was so brilliant
and appealing. in the role of Elsie
Lindtner that it was difficult to Withhold
full belief from anything which the
character did. This is the best per-
formance in the career of an actress
who has done many fine things in the
( theater. Because she has done one
sort of role exceedingly well, the brisk
and brittle thing, a belief had begun to
grow that this was her all. She
trampled on that notion yesterday
afternoon. Her satire was as insinuat-
ing and as sharp as ever. but there was
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