Evening star., 1938-08-01

largest opening night audience II
ever had seen on hand for The
Miners Daughter" Out at the Cross
Roads Theater, where things really
began to get going with THE Ghost
Train" things have been humming,
too, and even Saturday night, when
it rained, and the smallest audience
of the week turned out, there were but
few seats vacant.
All of this indicates other things, of
course, in addition to indicating that
the competition is stimulating inter-
est in the summers footlight offerings.
1t indicates in the case of the Road
side, for instance, that audiences out
at the red barn on the Rockville pike
have yen stronger than for any
other theatrical fare for old-time
melodrama of the type that gave the
group its start way back with THE
Octoroon" When The Miners
Daughter" opened last Monday it
broke a four-we drought as far as
melodrama was concerned.
So the people came. And when the
WI " SOt dlou1lO LllhL IlC lSAAANi .
Daughter" was truly magnificent
melodrama and that it was being
played spiritedly in the Roadside ira
dition the people kept on coming.
Just to refresh your memory, in case
you have not yet seen The Miner S
Daughter" you should know that 1t
brings back to the Roadside Miss
Frances Brunt, who just about steals
all the honorS while proving she still
is perhaps the best heroine who ever
got saved from a Roadside villain
that it has a new villain, who is the
best in long time, in the person of
Norman Rose; that number of other
people-Betty Gray, Pryor McFadden,
Ralph Fowler, Betty Rice, Ed Stevling-
son and some more whose names we
can't for the life of us recall at the
moment-contribute most handsomely
to the fury of it all.
There is an entracte. too, by Miss
Brunt, Miss Gray, Mr.. Rose and Mr..
Stevlingson, which is the best OF its
kind since She's More to Be Pitied
than Censured" burst upon an unsus-
pecting Washington.
X X X
A T THE Cross Roads Theater this
upturn seems to indicate both
that the theater is becoming more and
better known and that it is giving the
people something when they get there
1t started, as we said somewhere not
far back, with The Ghost Train"
which found that there was a ready
audience in the summer time for mys-
terry thrillers of shrieks and scary
doings.
Now it is continuing with Private
Lives" because every one who has
visited the Cross Roads Theater this
past week has found that Mr.. Noel
Coward in this particularly gay mood
is fine summer diet. Your first re-
action may be Why did they ever
try it?" and upon seeing it your re-
action might be, "If they had to at
tempt it why can't they try to get
more out of it?" For this produc-
ton Of Private Lives" if viewed in
town in November would certainly be
no great shakes.
But the fact remains that it turns
out to be fun, that Private Lives"
out at the barn theater at Baileys
Cross Roads, is very engaging, indeed.
Saturday night it was slow getting
up steam. possibly because the players
were somewhat mystified by rain on
tin roof, not thinking to remedy the
problem by speaking more loudly. 1n
fact, the only serious criticism that
might be offered the people of the
Cross Roads Theater's current play
is the reminder that the other people
paid just as much to get in as those
in the first three rows.) But it picked
up as it went along. that beautiful
brawl Mr. Coward devised for his Sec
ond act coming off handsomely, the
final act being full of bang-up give