Life — May 20, 1920 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

LIFE- a 2 “The Girl from Home” has an amusing plot ~ANe but indifferent music; “Betty, Be Good” has COM tuneful music but one of the worst books in the history of civilization; “Honey Girl” tells an interesting story, and combines with it some very catchy music, which is more than can be said for most musical comedies of this age. It is by no means a remarkable production. The old race- track play, “ Checkers,” has been taken out and curry-combed, fed up with bran-mash, and made into a musical comedy by Edward Clark and Albert Von Tilzer. It isn’t that it is par- ticularly well done, but it isn’t particularly badly done, which is high praise when you consider its possibilities. And Mr. Von Tilzer has written a large number of songs, of which a legal percentage contain a vivifying kick. “Honey Girl” is one of those racing plays where people are constantly shouting “They're off!" and looking feverishly through field-glasses at a space just to the left of the back- drop, where the stage carpenter is probably standing, while the orchestra plays “ buckety-buckety” music and everyone in the audience gets excited, although they know perfectly well that there isn't a horse-race within eighty miles of the theatre. The chorus, too, do a great deal of screaming and rushing about, but you don’t mind that so much after you have heard them sing. A cast, headed by Lynne Overman and George McKay, take adequate care of the lines, some of which are good, and of the lyrics, most of which are terrible. I think that there are some states in which Mr. Overman could be hanged for singing a song like “I'm Trying,” one of those recitative things with a perfectly dandy moral, this one, in particular, based on Kip- ling’s “If.” But, taken by and large (sthich is how you have to take any musical comedy if you want to take it at all), “ Honey Girl” is good entertainment, the BRBRRELE RSS ““CHE GIRL FROM HOME” had much better antecedents than “ Honey Girl,” having been, in the old days, Richard Harding Davis's comedy, “ The Dictator.” It is still very amus- ing, and Frank Craven plays the William Collier part as well as anyone could except William Collier. But somehow you are constantly expecting more than you ever get. Silvio Hein’s music is not what you look for from Silvio Hein. It is all right enough, and there are no discords, and nobody sings a senti- mental recitative, but, aside from a song about wireless, in which each member of the chorus is equipped with an electri spark with which they keep approximate time to the music the approximate dark, there is nothing that you feel particular! impelled to buy in the lobby. It must in all fairness be said, however, that to the naked eye the chorus and show-girls are very gratifying, very gratifying. The whole production gives one the impression of having just returned from a round-the-world tour of fifteen years, having started out brand-new in 1905. Not that it is at all shop-worn, but the whole atmosphere of the thing, scenery, costumes, cast and situations, topping off with the dramatic entry of a squad of United States marines from the battleship Pennsylvania just in time to thwart the rebel general in his plot to shoot the United States consul, is reminiscent of the time when Raymond Hitchcock was singing “It Was Not Like That in the Olden Days” and Frank Daniels was asking if his face was red. And, after all, maybe that wouldn't be a bad atmos- phere to bring back, Sn F “Betty, Be Good” at the Casino not much can be said, except that it has some pretty music. That, of course, is something. But you can buy the music and play it for your- self, or hang around a mechanical player in a store on Broad- way until you have learned to whistle it, and, by so doing, you will save yourself the embarrassment of sitting through a very cheap and very banal performance. “AJOT SO LONG AGO” has no music, except that which the orchestra plays between the acts, and as the action of the play is supposed to transpire before 1890, the incidental music, of course, consists of “ Annie Laurie,” “ When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” and “Ben Bolt.” Any period earlier than 1890 always calls for these tunes. As a matter of fact, “Not So Long Ago” is a tender little play of the early '7o’s, and, if you don’t mind tender little plays, it is excellent fare. A romantic young dressmaker, romantically played by Eva Le Gallienne, comes home each night to regale her girl friends with tales of the courtly attentions of the young master in the house where she has been sewing, all of which she has made up out of whole cloth (to use a dressmak- ing term) as the result of reading too many paper-covered love-stories—and, incidentally, as a result of being in love her- self with the young master. He discovers that he is being made the hero of an affair in which he hardly knows the other party by sight, and very gallantly enters into the spirit of the deception, which soon, of course, ceases to be a deception at all. chara in the comicbooks.com