Life — November 16, 1905 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

Shakespeare so completely lost in the reading as he is by Mr. Greets players, Here and there one catches a word, a phrase or a sentence, but in the main the text is either swallowed or smothered by the actors into an incomprehensible mixture of sound which is not Shakespeare, and certainly is not even English as we are accustomed to hearing that language spoken, Mr. Greet brought to us one company whose delivery was a delight to the ear and a joy to the understanding. The success of ** Ever man” established a following for Me. Greet in America, and perhaps gave him the idea that anything done with a pretence to scholarliness and the unusual could be successfully foisted on that element in our population which runs after such things. We are afraid that such readings as Mr. Greet’s people give to Henry V.” will fail to appeal to even the fad-fol- lowers who might otherwise be attracted to Elizabethan presentations of Shakespeare. . * . I the breasts of the Tender. loiners there is a real senti~ ment forthe old Casino, Ex- cept the Metropolitan Opera House, if that can be called a theatre, no theatre in New York ever had somanystandees, In the case of the Casino they belonged mostly to the Johnny class, who were interested at long or short range in the ladies on the stage. They would stand pa- tiently through the of their worship, whether she was prima donna or the last girl in the last row of the chorus. Many a callow youth and many an experienced rounder were to be found in the patient crowd that stood up through performance after performance to watch the triumphs of these ladies in their respective lines of work, Since the early days of the Casino many of the youths have become rounders and many of the rounders have passed away, but the old sentiment still exists, At the opening of the rebuilt and re- juvenated Casino, the serried ranks of the standees at the back of the chairs again put up an unbroken front. To these and to other old acquaintances of the Casino the new ar- rangement of the house and the new ornamentation had an unfamiliar aspect, Although the Moorish scheme of decoration which made the Casino unique among New York theatres has not been abandoned, the architectural changes have destroyed the irregular harmony of arrangement which used to please the eye. Dropping the floor to the street level has left the old boxes up in the air, where the gorgeous- ness of apparel of their occupants represents so much lost money so far as effect on the rest of the audience is concerned. The changes make for comfort and for safety, and to-day the Casino, instead of being one of the worst fire-traps in New York, as it used to be, is a safe and commodious and quite sufficiently gorgeous theatre. epDIK POY. “CHE EARL AND THE GIRL," which is the opening attraction at the new Casino, is an English musical play interpreted by an American company, It belongs in that class of entertainment of which our public is pretty well tired. The present performance also demonstrates again how much better the English do this sort of thing. Girl is the main part of the musical comedy, and either from -LIFE- 591 lack of the proper material in America, pe or on account of bad taste in selection, we do not get here the kind of girl that gives the English brand of musical com- edy its peculiar distinction, “The Earl and the Girl "is common- place, although its numerous authors and composers have given it lines and music which are agreeable and which are quite up to the average of this kind of en- tertainment. That its plot is not a plot doesn’t matter especially, and that its lines show no marked humor or originality is not fatal to a piece of this sort, But when its principals are not notable, and its minor char- acters and chorus are sim- ply the ordinary run of un- graceful and not carefully selected American chorus girls, we get the English tin- musical play with its most attractive and di guishing quality left out. The element of feminine daintiness has so much to do with the charm of these English pieces that the un-dainty young women who are recruited for our stage rob them of their principal claim to the approval of experts in this line of entert Mr. Eddie Foy is the star in the cast. He is a comedian sui generis, very, very funny in a suitable part, but his personality has not been sufficiently inment. performance in atti- studied in this instance to bring out his true value. tudes of adoration for He makes all that is to be made of the material at the particular object NELLIE MC Coy IN "THE EARL AND THE his command, but all through the performance there crt.” isa feeling that he should have something more or something more congenial to do. Georgia Caine Amelia Summerville and Nellie McCoy are not in the least un- pleasant, but the performances of all them and the other young women in the cast emphasize the fact that there is something lacking in the English musical comedy done by an American company. “OHE EARL AND THE GIRL,” as shown at the Casi- no, compares favorably with performances of the same kind, but again raises the ques- tion of the value of this kind of entertain- ment regarded purely as amusement. All these pieces have such DR a sameness, they are all lacking in original features except such mechanical novelties as the very pretty swinging chorus, in the pres ent instance, and they are all such copies, one of the other, that they must have grown tiresome, even to the very Class of theatre-goers to which they are supposed to appeal, Every one of these musical comedies pro- duced makes even the person of ordinary intel almost ready to go down on his knees and pray Provi- dence to vouchsafe to us once again literary and musical novelty, such as that shown in the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. EDDIE POY Ax Metcalfe. rae wart oF STOLE. comicbooks.com