Evening star., 1923-03-04
Ne1U York Heuter C0ssiD.

SanhitIous gentleman with a sword.
NeW england is owen Davis oyster
Gnu IL is %ery clammy biValve. Here
saln we nave the proverbial picture
VI nard-shelled and chilly relatives
, hanging on the death bed of a rich oIdt
Woman. But this time the picture
mas some high lights of humor and
humanity. And the drab tragedy of
ms sort of life is violently pushed
aside by display of the kind OF
vitality that keeps even New England
Sung. TWO young people, one
| ne er -do-well son and a poor relation
upset the money-grabbing family and
me tradition that high-brow Ameri
or tragedy.
There is a good deal of hokum In
! iceDound, forced but entertaining
numor, as we'll as a few stock figures.
as the hokum, and it is pretty solid
and true stuff. Altogether a drama
while
There is nothing the matter with
| the cast in "The Laughing Lady the
play which Arthur Hopkins has
chosen to bring Ethel Barrymore out
from the eclipse of her disastrous
failure with Romeo and Juliet"
don't remember any play of the kind
that has been better acted. But what
kind. 1t is just the good old British
drawing room drama with which
Charles FTohman. assisted by
corps of London playwrights. used to
MI the Empire Theater season after
Alfred Sutra. who wrote The
Laughing Lady," is now turned sixty.
But this seems to make no difference
In his play. The wit, the badinage
and the good manners are just as pol
fshed as ever. Age cannot dull them
And the moral conclusions are quite
as stupid and stultifying as Of yore.
Maturity does nothing to improve
them. The first two acts are deft and
amusing. They begin with the ar
rival at the same dinner party of q
lady who has just been spectacularly
divorced and the lawyer who success
fully attacked her character in court.
They proceed to fall i'll love. The
last act makes a hash of the whole
thing. The lawyers motherly wife
a bit of dowd who has been expecting
him to wake UP one of these days-is
ready TO renounce him. But-"his
career" and the laughing lady's
finicky morals get all mixed up in the
plot, and the two lovers go back in
splendidly SELF sacrificing mood to
make it unpleasant for their former
spouses the rest of their lives.
The point Of the whole thing is that
The Laughing Lady" gives Ethel
Barrymore a chance to do some sacrI-
ficing, too. She gives up good. solid
art and goes back to her old audience,
the gushing girls and palpitating ma
irons who want to see her exercising
her personal magnetism in beautiful
clothes.
Recent first nights on Broadway
have also displayed the following:
Rita Coventry" an unconvincing
play about a prima donna. made by
Hubert Osborne from Julian Streets
novel, with good acting by Dwight
Frye, good singing by Dorothy Fran
els and bad acting by most of the re-
manning company. with the exception
of Polly Damrosch. daughter OF the
New York Symphony conductor:
Anything Might Happen" not verE
exceptional farce by Edgar Selwyr.
which is made most amusing at times
by the excellent art of Roland Young.
Estelle Winwood and Leslie Howard.
and a preposterous old thing, called
Hail and Farewell" all about the
most notorious demimondaine on the
continent tvintage 1S10). in which
Florence Reed acts very we'll indeed
Copyright. l923l