Judge — March 5, 1921 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Drown by Hewway Pausten is rather unfortunate for “The Midnight Rounders of 1q21” that it happens to be the only new enter- tainment presenting itself in the weekly period covered by this review. Ina more crowded time it might have slipped by with a paragraphic mention of its defects and there would have been less time to draw deductions from them. It happens, though, that we are facing a curious theatrical condition. It is a well-known fact that New York has many more theatres than ever before in its history. Ordinarily this would mean that the failures and the ending runs of successes which had exhausted their drawing power would make necessary one or more new productions for every week in the theatrical season. This has been the case in other seasons when New York had nothing like as many theatres. There are a number of explanations for this state of affairs. A glance at ‘What's What in the Theatres” will show that every one in the long list has some in- dividual claim to the continued patron. age of some section of the theatre-going public. It will also be seen that several of them are in the enjoyment of runs which in other years would have been thought phenomenal. “Lightnin’,” for instance, has almost two years to its credit, and others have kept their theatres tenanted for the whole of the present season and longer. The largely increased price of theatre tickets has in some cases kept the weekly receipts of other attractions above that deadly minimum which means a moving out The constantly increasing resident and visiting population and larger incomes for more people mean a larger possible public for every theatre. S° it happens that in a week in mid winter “The Midnight Rounders” is the only new offering claiming noticc And even this is a midnight “roof” show, meaning that it is given in what is to all intents a regular theatre save that it is located in a building on top of the Century Theatre and has to be reached by an elevator journey. There are of io) course good real-estate reasons for utilizing this space which would other- wise be unproductive of revenue. The public doesn’t mind going up into the stellar regions to be entertained, as the elevator habit has come to be second nature with the present generation. Nor is the midnight hour for the performance a deterrent. The old tradition that the night was meant for sleep is pretty well exploded, certainly with visitors to New York who are paying a high price per minute to stay in our expensive precincts and who want to make every minute of the day and night pay a dividend in the experiences peculiar to the metropolis. This last they get in “The Midnight Rounders.” It is not to be believed that it could be found anywhere else. No where except in New York could t found such lavish expenditure to. s little purpose. The capacity of the stage is the only thing apparently which has limited the number of young women employed, and even this is enlarged by permitting them to overtlow into imme diate contact with the audience. There no suggestion of economy in the stage settings nor in the constantly changing costumes except that in many cases the latter are stingily scant. This is par- ticularly true in the matter of the young women’s hosiery and bodices, HERE is music. too, and a-plenty of its kind. This is largely jazz which has come to tire the cars even of those who used to love it most V. ocally there is an absence of both volume and quality. Choruses which do not even make themselves heard are, to put it gently, ineffective. economy has evidently been practiced on “The Midnight Rounders” in one particular. This is in the expendi ture for brains. It may be that to satisfy some part of the public a profusion of girls, music and jazz is all that is needed. It is difficult to believe though that even New York’s midnight public is so sensual and unintelligent that it will flock in paying numbers where there is an utter absence of any kind of artistic cleverness 20 here must be, even with such patrons, alimit tothe lure of undressed femininity, particularly when the femininity is not of distinguished quality in beauty, symmetry or grace. We have pretty well passed that period of the Black Crook days when a sensation could be created by putting on three hundred chambermaids in pink cotton tights to make up a March of the Amazons HE worst things in this profusion of misdirected expenditure were the alleged comedians. The most inexperi- enced of censors would have known cnough to climinate them utterly. It was rumored that one of them was kept in the bill under a threat of an injunction, mandamus, or other dire legal means which saved him from a deserved chuck ing down the clevator shaft by the management. It may have been in excellent taste to put on a coarse- mannered young Hebrew in the cari- catured garb of a Christian minister, to carry on an affair with a blondined ng woman, but it was not found ex- cruciatingly funny even by the Hebrews in the audience whom it was evidently intended to please. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened to that young man if he had dressed as a Catholic priest or a Jewish rabbi It seems entirely possible to put on an entertainment of the sort “The Midnight Rounders” was perhaps intended to be and have it, if not of highly intellectual quality, at least amusing and not offen sive. This presupposes that a small part of the large expenditure should be be- stowed upon some person or persons of brains and refinement to lay out the plan and provide material with some sug gestion of cleverness and humor. In its present form it recalls the tale of the late John Stetson who was producing some very claborate spectacle. When asked about the cast, it occurred to him that he had forgotten that detail. “Here, Jones,” he called out to his stage manager, “go down on Four- teenth Street and hire some actors. Metcalfe. yor comicbooks.com