Page:The New Yorker 0004, 1925-03-14.pdf/15

If you were an actress, God forbid, yours would indeed be the breaks if you could appear in a play about another actress. It must be like Christmas morning to a star to find that she is to have a prolonged crack at the leading rôle in one of those dramas that tells the story of the tempestuous, tousle-headed, golden-hearted little hoyden who becomes the greatest actress in la belle France, or the toast of that so-mad Vienna, or the glory of brave little Poland, or what you will.

One of those dramas that carefully explains, every other line, how but to look upon the heroine is to love her, and what wonder is it that men go mad, apparently in block formation, and shoot themselves en masse as tribute to her charms. One of those dramas that unfailingly includes the big temperamental scene with the manager, showing how the kiddie got her start. One of those dramas whose heroine is just as dazzling at seventy as she was at twenty. And one of those dramas which is so gloriously, so comfortingly, so riotously insistent that the lady of the leading part is the greatest actress of all time. It mayn't be so much fun for the audience, but, boy, what a field day it is for the star.

The latest of the plays along these lines is "Starlight", which, rumor is persistently hathing it, is another of those little rascals that delighted all the great hearts out on the Coast. Somehow, the longer we live-which is occurring even as we sit here, tossing restlessly at the typewriter,—the more personal become our feelings about California. It's a pretty lucky day for it that it is three thousand miles away.

Well, anyway, that is scarcely here, nor, as our French cousins would put it, la (there). "Starlight" is the work of Miss Gladys Unger, who is, at a conservative estimate, not this department's favorite playwright. She has told her story in a bewildering number of scenes, and has let it become known that her heroine is, really, Sarah Bernhardt. The lace-like delicacy and mellowed good taste of this tribute of hers to the dead Bernhardt become strikingly apparent when it is developed that the rip-roaring comedy scene of the play shows the actress in the pangs and outcry of labor.

To Miss Doris Keane falls the rôle of the actress, and she goes through it like Sherman to the sea. There were heartening flashes during her performance when we thought, "Why, heaven bless her critical heart, she's kidding what you Americans call the tripe out of this thing", and we warmed to her, in our great sympathy, and were sisters under the skin, and everything. But then again there were long, loud stretches when our spirit drooped and we could not but feel that her burlesquing of the part was only too unintentional.

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And now, if we can find a taxi with a green flag, let us fly far from the Broadhurst Theatre to the quaint discomfort of the Provincetown Playhouse, where they are producing Charles Vildrae's "Michel Auclair". It is a quiet play, with the same singleness of tone that pervaded ("pervaded"! we must work that in again!) the author's "S. S. Tenacity". But it seemed to us a highly interesting one, without a minute's exception, and well acted, besides, by Helen Freeman, Walter Abel and Edgar Stehli, in the order named.

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Up at the Cosmopolitan say what you like about us, you must admit that we cover a lot of territory,-is the new Ziegfeld production, "Louie the 14th", which must have cost thirty or forty million dollars in costumes alone, even if they had them made in the house by a seamstress. We have always felt that insisting upon the beauty of a show's costuming is rather like saying, after witnessing certain movies, "Well, it was awfully good photography, anyway." And it is in just that spirit that we call attention to the lavish habiliments of "Louie the 14th."

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And now, just so you won't think we are always crabbing, we will conclude this recital with a word or so for the Actors' Theatre-they that were the Equity Players production of "The Wild Duck." Simply swell.

 

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The New Plays

• Sky-High. At the Shubert. One of those Shubert musical things, with Willie Howard, minus his big brother, and plus Joyce Barbour and an unusually adept chorus.
• Starlight. At the Broadhurst. Doris Keane in a comedy of many scenes covering fifty-nine years in the life of a famous actress. It seems longer.
• Louie the 14th. At the Cosmopolitan, Mr. Ziegfeld running wild on costumes, settings, and Leon Erral's salary, and then royally handing over baby's bank to cover the expenses of comedy and music.
• Michel Auclair. At the Province-town. A subdued little play by the author of "S. S. Tenacity," well acted and skilfully presented.
• Pierrot the Prodigal. At the Forty-eighth Street. Laurette Taylor in Tuesday-and-Friday matinees of the revived pantomime.

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