Life — March 17, 1921 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

Ladies’ Day 1TH the overwhelming woman vote which predominates any afternoon gathering in mind, the producers of the flock of special matinees which have swarmed down on Broadway during the past month have selected, for the most part, plays dealing with women's worrics, “ Diff'rent,” “ The White Villa,” “ Cradle Song,” and “ The Tyranny of Love,” all deal with more or less pathological manifestations of what Keats has called “ Love.” In the first three is disclosed the result of deliberate inhibition of the feminine instinct to be clubby, and in “The Tyranny of Love” we see the horrible effects of too little inhibition. In all the cases the deduction to be drawn is that it is a very sad ‘world, ‘ Pe eg) rag) Be “CHE Tyranny of Love” is an adaptation from the French. (You wouldn't recognize the name of the author, even if I could remember it.) Were it not for the fact that it receives excellent treatment at the hands of Estelle Winwood and Cyril Keightley, it would amount practically to a burlesque. It is one of those French immorality plays in which the husband is very busy writing his paper for the scientific convention and has to keep jumping up all the time to demand of his wife that she tell him the truth, and to remind her that she still bears his name, Only in this case, the wife's chief offense is that she is too much in love with her husband. This, of course, is con- sidered very bad behavior in a French triangle play and would justify the other gentleman's killing them both on sight in ac- cordance with the Continental version of the Unwritten Law. No one kills anyone, however, but there is a lot of “leaving my house” and suicide threatening, and it ends by everyone accusing everyone else, without the slightest justice, of being to blame for the whole thing. According to the programme, Mr. Henry Baron is to blame. yee ‘‘ Gz ie 0 A “CHE WHITE VILLA” is quite another story. A most effective play has been made by Edith Ellis from Karen Michaelis’ “ The Dangerous Age,” and Lucile Watson makes it seem much better than it really is. It tells the story of a wo- man.who thought it would be nice to go off and live by herself on an island. Well, it wasn’t. That's all there is to it, except that with a true Scandinavian flair for looking on the bright side the author makes it impossible for her ever to go back to her old life. Heigh-ho! IX “Cradle Song,” another translation, this time from the Spanish, we see the inside of a convent, and pictorially it is a most striking scene, with’ its brilliant whites and contrasting blacks. The value of pure white in scenic effects seems to have been overlooked in the scramble for exotic reds and greens, much as the value of plain dialogue had been overlooked in "4 1. Dy wy 11 Ld FE the rush for epigrams and heroic speeches until Zona Gale and Frank Craven came along with “Miss Lulu Bett” and “The First Year.” “Cradle Song” is not a play to leave you limp, unless you doze off once or twice during the second act, but as a study of thwarted mother-love finding its outlet in the bringing-up of a girl baby left at the convent, it has moments of considerable power. The rich Irish brogue-of Whitford Kane in the part of the old Spanish doctor Don José suggests, however, that Don O'Shea was the name before the family moved to Spain. BP LPNS HE four one-act plays written by Clare Kummer which form the special matinee bill at the Punch and Judy Theatre, are not particularly feminine in nature except for the fact that no one but a woman could have had the delicate and delicious abandon to have written them. All the male play- wrights in the country, with the possible exception of George M. Cohan, should attend these performances in a body and see what it means to be original, and then should go away and say over to themselves five hundred times each night before they count up at their own box-offices: “I couldn't do it if I tried. I couldn't do it if I tried.” Possibly they wouldn't want to do it, especially if counting up at their own box-offices is as pleasant as it must be for Mr. Hopwood, for instance. But if there is any justice at all in this world, the woman who wrote “The Robbery” (and got Ruth Gilmore and Sidney Blackmer to play in it) will some day have a chance to leer triumphantly at the co-author of “ Ladies’ Night.” “The Robbery” is, it is true, by far the best of the four playlets of Miss Kummer’s, It has more lines which mean nothing at all than any play in town, and there is no one who can make a meaningless line sound so charming as Miss Kummer. “What is worth doing at all, is worth doing well” is her young hero’s argument for an early marriage. And, until you think it over, it sounds like a very good argument, too. It is too bad that the bill should end with “Chinese Love,” not because it isn’t good, but because many other people, even a man, could have written it. And most of the conventional comedy in “The Choir Rehearsal” shows signs of its revision for vaudeville use. But the general impression of the afternoon as a whole is delightful. BAYH O & OY WO BY “AAR. PIM PASSES BY” is the latest offering of the The- atre Guild and while it looks a bit immature and in- cffectual on the stage recently occupied by “ Heartbreak House,” it is very pleasant entertainment indeed, Perhaps we expect too much from Mr. Milne, the author. His writings in Punch and the collections of his works which have reached this country, have led us always to look for an ex- quisite touch producing the most simple and yet the most original effects. There is almost nothing so originally simple in the dialogue of “Mr. Pim Passes By” as to’ suggest the “A. A.M.” of Punch. It is simple, but sometimes that is all. We should be thankful, however, for such occasions as that on which Mrs, Marden describes her first husband as a man “who went to jail a great.deal.” And above all, we should be thankful for Laura Hope Crewes, who plays Mrs. Marden. There ought to be an official proclamation issued setting aside a special day of public thanks for Laura Hope Crewes. Robert C. Benchley. comicbooks.com