Life — February 10, 1898 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

> LI An Impossible Stage Heroine. THAT husky French peasant girl, whose insanity made her the Susan B, Anthony of her time, fits herself badly to th requirements of modern drama, Besides that, the modern drama of Frances Aymar Matthews fits itself badly to Jeanne d’Are, or Joan Dare, or Joan of Are, whichever you may please to call he Between the two stools of a bad play and an unattractive charac- ter, Fanny Davenport falls very prove indeed. The lady who wrote the play is evidently suffering from a com- plication of the ideas which afflict playwrights. The rhyming couplets of Shakespeare, which the best commentators number among his worst defects, evidently struck her fancy as essential to a play which is Shakespearean in so far as it, like some of his, of history. She has perhaps heard some member of the Theatrical Trust say that a play to be a success must havea “love interest,” 80 touches on an episode FE: of a character that never was and never could be, and fails—which is not his fault. The remaining cast is made up of about the same kind of actors that the Theatrical Trust sends out to Rochester, Chicago, East Saginaw and Philadelphia. “Joan” is expensively mounted, but it is not by any means the best piay that ever came down the pike. REHAN * * * M Viola is one of the best impersonations in her repertory, It is dainty and graceful, and full of the indi- vidual charm which has given her the high place she holds on the stage of two countries. In the recent revival of ‘Twelfth ght,” at Daly's, she played it with a repression of the manner- isms which have of late brought her adverse criticism, and there- fore to the great pleasure of all who heard her, \ Paris a young * « * I irl may not go to the theatre, even with her own parents, The nature of the stage productions is such that no decent young woman may witness them and preserve ber reputation for innocence. Happily, that is not the case in America. Young girls may go in squads to the matinces of “* The Conquer- ors” and “The Tree of Knowledge,” provided they have the price of admission, or to the evening performances as the guests of young men. They may witness choice scenes of debauchery, de- picted with perfect fidelity and with no details omitted. There’s no fool modesty about us Americans, We're not squeamish about our girls, like those wicked French, No, sir-ee, by gosh! Metcalfe. she makes three of her male characters desper- ately in love with the most pronounced new woman in history. One of these she invents bodily in the form of a jester who could not have drawn a week’s salary in the gloomiest or stupidest court of Europe in the darkest days of the dark ages. A jester was not always funny, nor always a fool, but he had todo something in the amusing or the satirical line to earn his salt, This Clichet of Frances Aymar Matthews wears the cap and bells for some reason more patent to the playwright than it is to the audience, or than it could possibly have been to the Court of Charles VII. Of course it would not do to have Joun, Charles VII, and Clichet talking the English of to-day, and the author's attempts to get away from this absurdity result in some of the most remarkable pieces of sentence-building heard since that lamentable mix-up at the tower of Babel. The lines of * Joan” sound as though the English of Shakespeare and the English of Vassar College had tried to pass each other on the same track, It may be honestly said that Fanny Davenport is now in the full maturity of her powers. She cannot be excused on the ground of inexperience, and, if faults are hers, they are not to be glossed over by predictions concerning her future career. Measured even by the low standard of our time, she cannot be called a great actress. She pos- sses a fair amount of intelligence, mighty little of the true artistic temperament, a large quan- tity of staginess, a strong physique, and of con- vincing magnetism not a particle. She supplies fairly adequate pictures of the heroines of but in a weak part, like the Joan of Miss Matthews, she is not even picturesque. Of the Clichet of Mr. Melbourne Macdowell, it may be said that he tries earnestly to make something Sardot ESPECIALLY USEFUL IN CASE OF UNEXPECTED SNOW.