Life — November 17, 1921 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

Several Hundred Thousand Words ‘ HE WANDERING JEW” is pretty dull. It has lots of people, lots of scenery, and gives every indication of having been an expensive thing for Messrs. Belasco and Erlanger to produce, but along about nine o’clock you begin to wonder what the next stage-setting is going to look like. It is the same speculative interest in the scenery of the next act which buoys me up through some operas and most Shakespearean performances. And the time has passed when a spectacle can knock audiences cold simply by being a spectacle. John Murray Anderson and Mr. Ziegfeld have changed all that. Some- thing more than moncy has got to be put into scenery in order to make it distinctive to-day. Even money and ordi- nary good taste will not do it. Perhaps “imagination” is not too strong a word for what is needed. Fifteen years ago “The Wandering Jew” would have struck people ‘blind with its splendor, but to-day they are impressed with it in much the same degree as they are impressed by the Hotel Touraine in Boston. This is not to say that “The Wandering Jew” is badly done. It is done about as well as it could be. But what’s the sense in people going about talking in blank verse any- way? It sounds silly. . HILE on the subject of people going about talking, it should be noted that the Neighborhood Playhouse has opened its eighth season in Grand Street with Granville 3arker’s “The Madras House,” in which people do practi- cally nothing else but talk. It is real talk, however, and those people who like to do just a dash of thinking now and then while they are listening to a play, ought to hear it. It would be well, however, to stop thinking just before the beginning of the last act. The author did. The only difference between the acting at the Neighbor- hood Playhouse and that of its Broadway competitors is that the cast on Grand Street is better than most uptown casts. Whitford Kane, Warburton Gamble, Eugene Powers and most of the rest, help to make the trip down to the East Side seem worth the loss of sleep. ie HE SIX-FIFTY” is another play with a red table- cloth on the kitchen-table in the first act. In the last act the husband meets his dismal wife coming down stairs with her hand-bag all packed ready to leave the farm and go to the city. In such situations, the odds are easily seventy-five to one that she does not leave home. It has been’ estimated that, in the assembled dramas of all nations, not more than three out of the thousands and thousands of wives who have }) intercepted on the way out with traveling-bags in their hands, have actually gone through with the thing. They are not always wives. Sometimes they are young girls who have been visiting the family and who find out that they are in love with the master of the house or the footman. Then they decide that it will be best for everyone concerned if they leave at once. So they appear, either from the bed-room at right, or the stair-way at right (it must always be at right), dressed in a plain blue going- away-from-here suit and carrying the conventional hand- bag. “Where are you going, Dori “Oh, nowhere, er—that is, only out to look at the moon.” “Come here, you silly little goose, and look me in the eye.” And Doris is on hand for breakfast the first thing in the morning. The first act of “The Six-Fifty” has a genuine ring, especially Lillian Albertson’s share in it, and the scene in the diner just before the train is wrecked has, at least novelty. But with the entrance of the traveling prima- donna someone upsets the words and they are spilled all over the play from then on. The prima-donna is one «i those conversationalists who would refer casually to her sister as “a dear, vivid, girl,” and is, so far as the records show, the first woman to utter the word “Faugh!” on the American stage. MONG DENOTE) VERY once in a while a musical comedy comes along which possesses something that makes first-nighters wag their heads from side to side and say: “A hit!” It is difficult to explain what this something is, for many a well-acted show with good music and an acceptable book has not had it. But “Good Morning, Dearie,” started out on the very first night with that transcendental quality which makes the ticket-speculators crowd around the box- office and old-timers predict another “Sally.” The assets of “Good Morning, Dearie” are not wholly intangible. Jerome Kern has written some very nice music and there is more good dancing than has shaken the local boards for a long time. Harland Dixon, Oscar Shaw, Louise Groody and Ada Lewis are some of the headliners, with Maurice and Leonora Hughes throwing in their specialties for good six-eight measure. And the Sunshine Girls are good enough to let the London Palace Girls go back home for good. Robert C. Benchley. comicbooks.com Jers viev that A —A insa ner hea 7 iro mal I —(