The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-03
Review Of Play .AtLittle Theater
 This Week

. an duuque SnOp TOT what we could fin,
 to go with some ladder-back chairs w
 had recent bought. Way back iron
 the rear we suddenly heard deep bari
 tone voice booming, "No, ain't a look
 ing for any colonial glass, and I ain
 wanting any decorated brass pop
 corn peppers nor bed-warmers, either
 Amt you got any books? Don't 70,
 ever see ,em when you pick up ole
 stuff! We knew immediately it wa.
 our old sea captain friend, Epes Tol
 liver, 50 we forgot all about purchases
 end went and got him and invited hin
 out for dinner.
 Over the final coffee and tobacco he
 asked us what we were doing buying
 furniture and we got off onto the pleas.
 ant ability of being able to pick up
 odds and ends every now and then and trying to fit them together, and finally
 landed on the general subject of movie
 interiors and stage decora tions.
 "Say, young folks, saw dress re-
 hcarsal at the Little theater Monday night O their next play, Children of
 Earth. and nearly forgot the play watching the things they had on the stage and the settings and lights. Seen 1t"
 Part of it." said Mrs. Irons. q watched Mrs. R. c. Woodsen get some of the bits from Mir. Bender's. That whatnot, especially
 "Whatnot! Say, wasn't that honey like? But shucks, you two ain't quite so old as am, so it couldn't be honey to you, but l can remember enough so that when see scenes from Godey's Lady Book come to life, and the cos tunes, too, just revert to juvenility and that's got enough letters in it to Irean something. This Mrs. Sexton, Mrs. Richard Sexton, I think it was, was the purtiest thing in that sort O crinoliny dress and bonnet I ever saw After seeing so many O these here sport clothes and high water skirts and water proof paints it just does me good all over to see some nice looking female come back in a sort O creamy yellow. I guess it was yellow, dress with blue doolollies around the skirt and fisher, or fichu about her shoulders.
 Now you take all that recreated at- mosphere O the dress, and half smile, sort O wistful like, and just on the sacred border O tears, and a voice that every now and then peeps out 0 kind o snuffer like repression and beams along with the half smile and you get a bit O the idea O what Mrs. Sexton created for me.
 Cooper up all her life with very de- sire dominated by an irascible and tlght-waddish paralytica1 father, who must a treated his women folk like a better sort hired girl and then sud- denly released from this awful slavery, she could be fine sort O specimen for n :,,f% though. She manages to get the lid off and half tempted by her own desires for life and the other half tempted by the | man she really loved and wouldn't even whisper his name to herself hardly, she | lets herself be swept into his arms by | spring and him.
 Peter Hale's him. If I was a wom- an, which I'm glad ain't, I'd a fal- len for him. What was that mans name? Walthall, wasn't it?'
 "Junius Walthall, yes.'
 Well, if was a woman, and all my life had to be bound to earth and yet couldn't loose none O my wants that wanted mostly, he'd make me forget my bonds. It ain't fair to the gentleman to remark on his handsomeness. He didn't make that but he did make the stops in his voice shade : his love speeches to just their right tones and depth and I think that those two in that scene in the woods were just about one O the very finest things that l have ever seen at the Little theater, and other places, too. just sat on the edge O my chair during that whole act.
 "To start with, the lights and that curtain used as back drop set eff the big bole O the tree out front sos that suddenly thought was a dreaming D sort O fanciful setting where nice rool dreams could be made, and I ain't [ a trying to be poetical, neither. That { just about exactly what it lookel like 1 10 me. Big forest on a spring night ( md soft blue shades and I ought to stick in a verb sos I won't be impress 'ionistic or somethin.' Among all O { hat comes the two lovers that's finally { confessed their love to each other and $ hey get to talking about their home { hats going to be. Lordy, it was so 4 pretty and so intimate that it hurt. And then, bang blows up the pastel ' oap bubble, and they disappeare an on s omes Mrs. Edwin Caldwell, Sybil, they t alls her behind scenes, and Mir. Percy f and the most startling r contrast in one scene that I ever saw f n a show. In all the mystical maze O h light woods that just been the scene O f overs comes half-crazed Portugee woman ravin' for drink and a full f razy, warped man. The lines from n