Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1925-02-01
Audiences May Be Tanned
Without an Unkind Word
By Phi1ander Johnson.

How irSsufficiently the American
playhouse OF today is equipped even
for the rudimentary demonstration
OF plain melodrama was shown in
the production of The Rat" at Polls
Theater. A story of love and ad-
venture, III which high society
touched the fringes of the under
world and found nobility of charac-
ter even among the most humble
denlzenS of great city harks back
to the time when melodrama was
one of the most popular forms OF
entertainment, though not held in
any extraordinary artistic regard
This type of play should move fast
Speech should follow speech with in
Simultaneous accuracy, and every
climax in the action should be ap-
preached on the run. Every char
acter claims emphasis a little bit
beyond the corresponding type in
actual humanity, after the manner
of Dickens, who, in addition to be-
ing novelist and humorist, was
something of a melodramatist. The
talent available for the Character
Bit is not SO abundant as it was
when plays like "Romany Rye" "The
Black Flag" and dozens of others
that came and went with the peren-
NAL reminder that virtue is reward
ed, that vice is punishable and that
the comedian may serve a useful
function by bringing light
solution to problems which threaten
most sincere consequences.
X X
The Rat" might have been play
something like The Two Orphans"
If 1t had been better performed. 1t
is "reminiscences of the French ro-
nance of which Victor Hugo con-
cerned himself in Les Miserables"
and Eugene Sue in The Mysteries
of Paris" From time to time the
atmosphere of the Apache dive is
lost to attention because of its re-
semblance to the rough cabarets,
which, in our own byways of the
night, reflect boisterous gayety, with
no touch of redeeming romance.
Only one character is we'll played in
the drama, the title role, which, in
the hands OF Horace Brahan, be-
comes almost a<"Liliom," and it is
essential of melodrama that all the
characters must be we'll played, even
though their intrinsic demands on
talent need not be high. This sweep
ing dismissal is hard to make with
Croker-King in the cast, an excel
lent actor striving to assert himself
in an unco-ordinated assemblage of
players.
Earl Carroll is evidently enjoying
a liberty in the theatrical world cal
culated to compensate him for any
personal restraint he was compelled
to undergo because Of legal interior
ence with certain of his exaltatory
activities. He played both sides of
Pennsylvania avenue. The Rat" by
Shubert booking, at Polls, and Van
tiles" under Erlangcrian auspices, at
the National. 1t may be doubted
whether his personally directed COM
petition with himself interfered seri-
ously with either of his properties.
x x x X
1t is remarkable how year after
year the world loves to listen to the
same old ballyhoo about invoking the
authorities to put a stop to some
unfamiliar phase of impudence in
stage demonstration. 1t would be
depressing to assume that audiences
resent an impudence only because it
has a novel touch. Yet invariably
the public becomes reconciled, at
least to point of tacit federation,
after the first storm of protest has
subsidized. The public protested
against Camille, Manon Lescant,
Carmen, Sappho, Du Barry and the
girl in THE Easiest Way"
Mr.. Carroll, after brief durance,
which was no doubt abundantly
ameliorated by bouquets and chick
en- salad, steps forth sort of hero in
the circle that bows abjectly before
the shrine of the Goddess Publicity,
who for the present appears to have
swept all the nine muses. from their
inches and to dominate the artistic
temple with flamboyant ease. Rob-
ert E. Long, formerly of this city, is
Mr.. CARROTS press agent, and car
ries in his breast pocket an assorted
collection of martyr halos, any one