Putnam patriot., 1927-12-15

doing badly the pulmotar of financial support is applied just before Christ mas to keep the piece alive until the holiday rush begins.
 In the theatre. this season of fall and early winter of 1927 has been good to managers and playgeers alike There are good plays with good acting and plenty of them. There are native-born dramas and foreign importations and an abundance of energetic and tuneful musical pieces. Altogether the visitor who comes into town week after next will have plenty of good things 10 interest and amuse him.
 Dr. Reinhsrdt'. Dream
 Heralded by columns of dispatches throughout the summer detailing the unique qualities of his productions at Salzhurg. Gilbert Miller brought into New York and into the great Century Theatre. Dr. Max Rheinhardt and his superlative company of German actors and actresses. Before an au- dienee which NIT. Percy Hammond persists in irritatingly describing as purple" the first production was made Shakespeare "A Midsummer Nights Dream" was delivered in Ger man and with cast which included Miss Rogamond Pinehot The famous Meissi. and the brothers Timing, known as the Barrymores of the Ger man Theatre Great was the ecstasy ef the critics when the first perform
 
 crush that iammed the Otto Kahn mansion on upper Fifth Avenue, bent upon shaking the hand of Dr. Rein hardt \ great and suspicious night in the American theatre. the printed chorus called it.
 Thus prepared we hetook ourselves 10 the Century to view this master work of the master stage manager Great was our disappointment there of We found that Dr. Reinhardt had followed his now almost too-well- known procedure of turning the thea Ire topsy turvy to produce new CT feet. Characters entered or made their exits from the orchestra pit. The stage was arranged in a series of l level allowing the characters 10 ap- near suddenly from all over the place The set. representing somewhat murkv effect of forest or cave was neither good nor excessively bad though we suspect that had II been presented by an unknown American manager the critics would have cut short his efforts with few words Of scorn. The lighting was ineXcusably bad and the costuming grotesqueiy ugly for the most part. Added to the roughness of Shakespeare unmusieal- Iy chanted in German, the constant activity of the various characters gave Co the stage the impression of a teem- ing ant-hill. High aloft in the bal conv. however. an excellent symphony orchestra interpolated the music Of Nendelssohn's dream" score and when it was all over, one felt that Nendelsehn rather than Shakespeare or Reinhardt had won the day. The acting, however, was another matter md the brothers Thimig displayed their versatility amply. Miss Pinehot, who. fo quote again the irritating MT. Hammond is "Pennsyvania' great rsf contribution 10 the Teutonic staree Was beautiful to look upon and spoke in German with ease and efficiency But on the whole, we found the evening strangely disap- pointing. and we left the theatre wishing that Mr. Miller, with his ex. ceilent taste and splendid sense of the theatre had made the production his own. using some of the more com- mendabie novelties of Dr. Reinhardt but not all of them.
 Galsworthy's Escape"
 When such an able producer as Alr. Winthrop Ames selects an actor of the type of Leslie Howard to portray the leading role in q play by John Gals worthy. the theatre has reason te ex- pect something of the finest and in Escape" the Galsworthy piece which Mir Ames is now presenting at The Booth Theatre the combination al- most achieves momentous theatri- cal event Just why if quite misses the mark s not due to the superb act ing of Mr Howard but rather to the production of Mir Ames and the frag- meutary quality of Mir Galsworthy' E play. No one can deny that the dra matic idea of Escape" is a beautiful one. X young man. chiyalrously de tending q woman of the streets from the brutality of a police officer, acci- dentally causes the death of the officer and is sentenced to five years for manslaughter. After two years in prison he escapes and through vary- ing scenes and in contact with many classes of people, Mir Galsworthy shows how the milk of human charity will be poured out to one in misery. In the final and most impressive scene of the play, the escaped fees into a church for sanctuary and re eeives it until of his own accord, rath- CT than to plunge his kindly vicar protector into trouble, he gives him- self up.
 If we were conducting school of acting we would send any ambitious young man or woman to witness MT Towards performance in the leading role. II is masterpiece of repres-