Life — May 11, 1922 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

Several Mysteries T is too bad that “The Shadow” isn’t better, for if it were it would be a good play. As it is, you just sit in a gentle doze stirring restlessly now and then to the realiza- tion that here is a scene of considerable power and there an excellent situation. Somehow you feel that the fault is with you that you aren’t more stirred. The trouble comes first at the start, which is a bad place for trouble to come. There is a great deal of exposition in good rich Dartmoor dialect, in which we are told, with many “by gooms” and “aye lasses,” that a certain old gen- tleman has disappeared, probably murdered, and that it is a very good thing for the community that he is out of the way. Everyone who comes into the village store says that it is a good thing he is out of the way. You gather that it is a good thing that he is out of the way. And, in order to stop the constant speculations as to who did it, you are almost on the point of standing up in your seat and saying that you did it and will they please go on with the play. be ‘HE SHADOW” is not always slow, however, and there are moments in the second and third acts which are so sincerely dramatic and honestly done that one is ashamed of finding fault with the rest of it, for at its slow- est it is much more worthy of consideration than most of the garden truck that is wheeled into town each week. Helen MacKellar is the young woman over whom all the fuss is made, and one can quite understand it. Much of the relief from the leisurely emotionalism of the piece is furnished by J. M. Kerrigan and Dallas Welford, the former still maintaining his position as the actor who never has quite enough to do to suit the audience and the latter ingratiating himself for the first time with this department by refraining from blowing himself up like a red balloon. And since we seem to be well into a general mention of individuals in the cast, it should be noted that Percy Waram and Noel Leslie were both excellent as the intense lovers. AY T is an old complaint in these columns,. but we really can not pass up a chance to say a nasty word for the audience at the up-town presentation of “The Hairy Ape.” We only wish that the Post-Office Department would allow that word to be as nasty as we should like to make it. “The Hairy Ape” is a play which is full of talk such as one actually might hear in the stoke-hole of a steamer. It is spoken by a man whose spirit is being tortured in its at- tempt to break through the sweat and grime of his muscle- bound flesh into some sort of crude expression. It is the most tragic language we have ever heard. But because it takes the form of oaths, blasphemy and slang, many dear ladies (and, we must admit, a few men) took it for comedy and greeted each line with coy giggles. Several people brought children, thinking that it was to be something like Hagenbeck’s Dog and Monkey Show. In front of us sat three of the fairest works of God, one of whom confided to the others, between nibbles at a chocolate: “Of course it is morbid, but I see the humor of it.” And so she did, bless her heart! She would have seen the humor in the burning of Joan of Arc. But she will never know how near she came to having her skull crashed in. It all depended on whether or not I could get loose the arm of my chair to use as a club, and I couldn’t quite make it. FCB R, HE success of “The Bat” and “The Cat and the Canary” has begun to stir the ambitions of other pro- ducers, and the word has evidently gone around that the mystery play is to be the thing this summer. And when the word gets around, watch out for an avalanche. Accord- ing to the accepted managerial philosophy, anything that has been successful once will be successful again—and again —and again, until at last the audience is able to repeat the lines with the actors. Then it is time to get something different. Of the two shots in the dark which have rung out during the past few weeks, “The Charlatan” hit somewhere ne: the public heart, and “The Night Calf” imbedded itself in the wood-work just over the umbrella-stand. Both have gone out deliberately to combine the tested devices of melo- drama. “The Charlatan” has, in addition, the novel feature of a magician in whose mysterious cabinet the original mur- der occurs, and, as played by Fred Tiden, this character has enough distinction to pull the play out of the ordinary groove. HE only thing that could pull “The Night Call” out of the groove wou'd be an announcement that it was in- tended as a burlesque mystery melodrama. If such was the intention, it has “The Tavern” backed into the warehouse, and the lines: “When our fairy-prince comes along, we shall know him the moment we see him” and “What is this thing we call love?” become epoch-making sentences in the litera- ture of kidding. If meant seriously, however, “The Night Call” has little to recommend it but the off-stage thunder. Robert C. Benchley. Thi stop | Bul most staple The rette The of pai The Coi The issue. Cap and N gone | The heart The land ¢ The very | The to gir things The markal Irene The Rambe sentim Kik portra; Mac ily. me along Par next The Six. autom: ous by To play momer The ofab Up edy, w Whi Viewed comicbooks.com