The Washington times., 1922-07-02
6ARRICk PLAYERS
NOTABLE FIND
OF SEASON
Ada Meade Reveals Talents
Which Brought Fame to
laGrette Taylor.
Continued from Page 81
cal difficulties never suspected
by its public.

Il" HNShoiNS oIuilt SCI Aoa
" in "The Acquittal" with the
Other Thing-the ultimately
Other Thing. The week there,
after She played the sciatic and
rum-bibbing Mrs. Grubbins in
Three Live Ghosts" In doing
30, she disguised her identity be-
yond recognition; a feat of which
at least had not thought her
capable, remembering the cock
ney maid servant in which that
identity had announced itself
like a Winged Victory, caught.
off its guard.
1t was all the easier for her
to play the gin-soaked old Mrs.
Grubbins, she explained, because
she had just played the tortured
wife Of a criminal. Her zest for
what she did was stimulated by
contrasts. One inferred that If
she were in grand opera she
would enjoy alternating as
premiere danseuse and prima
donna. And one was reminded
OF a comment, privately made
by Maria Jeritza, after her en-
tirely miraculous and quite un-
precedented triumph at the
Metropolitan last winter. 81
score points in opera" said Nine.
Jeritza, because Reinhardt, the
hardest theatrical task-master
alive today, set me to doing
operettd. 1t is a thousand times
more difficult. In operetta you
have to be everything-the
actress, tie dancer, the mime,
the vocalist, the mountebank."
Substitute musical comedy"
for the word operettu in Jeritza's
fiat. 1t may explain some Of the
seemingly impossible things Ada
Meade is doing, today in this
Washington town, as the leading
woman, hitherto so amazingly
- undiscovered, of the Garrick
Players.
: 1t will not explain them all.
Only hyper-sensitiveness, hyper
J impressionability of the imagi-
nation can account for some of
them. In the week just over, for
instance, her job was the i'm
; personation Of Ruth Chatterton-
. putting it badly. The very
! convincing, unforced, and unimi-
! tative James Renne was the
guest star. Because of him the
play had been selected He had
been Miss Chatterton's leading
, man throughout its Broadway
8 run.
Late on Wednesday, before the
. Sunday opening, Miss Meade saw
= the lines Of her part in this play
: for the first time in her life.
Z. Nor had she ever seen the play.
She bad, however, seen Miss
Chatterton, just once, in a Barrie
: phantasy, a year or two ago.
}. That was enough. The part
bulked longerSthan four ordinary
g "leads." It's endless lines all but
B, maundered, save as emphasized
. by complicated personality"
= business, close cut to the Ruth
, Chatterton Perfect SO. Miss
Meade was letter perfect; no less
in lines than in verisimilitude.
, Having seen the Ruthchatterton
Perfect SO exactly once, a year or
two ago, she looked it so con-
vincingly that Mr.. Rennie had
the illusion of being back on
Broadway, in the relaxed harness
of the Rialto see-saw. His job
throughout the week was easy.
|" HIS is not meant to be an
article about Miss Meade,
save as she illustrates an
idea--the hackneyed idea of the
? American l9cal-city stock COM
pany as the >one actual National
School of Acting. 1t is hack
neyed idea because it happens to
be a fact. Fact has often hum
drum way of sticking to the
bromide.
There are, of course. other
schools of acting; several, in
, deed, in the very side streets
. Immediately off Times Square,
. where for a fee you may study
' how it is done and get a di-
ploma when you know all about
, It. Graduates Of such schools
even "honor graduates" and
Of the best of them-enter a
stock company and show up as
more neophyte, less equipped
than the next extra man en-
trusted with a bit. The explana-
tion is obvious. In this country
there exists no formal tradition
of the actors art. The honor
graduate has merely been ab-
sorbing the individual slant of
some commercially.minded per-
son, or group of persons. who
found it paid better to teach
I that slant than to act it.
Now in European countries,
very particularly in France, all
- acting, art is adjusted to funda-
, mentals Of formal training. Ger.
tain laws Of personal vividness
for whatsoever type or temper
ament, have been established as
f q science, concrete, objective,
crystalized. For the mastering
: Of this formal science, years Of
d: private drudgery. analogous to