New Plays

Dixie to Broadway. Another machine gun of the show business has opened up on the line. It is a Negro musical comedy with Florence Mills directing the fire. Experts assert that the new contrivance shoots the fastest of all its kind.

It differs from earlier Negro models in elaborateness of dress. Money and a mild amount of taste have gone into the manufacture.

Speed and decoration have overwhelmed slightly the humor of the evening. Hamtree Harrington is hired to induce hysterics and is not as thoroughly ridiculous as he has been previously. His material rather than his method seemed at fault.

Florence Mills, who made sheer impudence an explosive factor of success, retains her frantic popularity. She is seconded by Shelton Brooks, Cora Green and Will Vodery's band. But it 'is the chorus that carries the motion.

Heywood Broun--"The most exciting of all the musical comedies now current in New York."

Alexander Woollcott -- "A dressy, rapid, ordinary musical show that happens to have employed colored folk for its songs and dances."

The Rising Son is a family matter with the name Nugent on the invitations. J. C, Elliott and Ruth Nugent, best recalled for Kempy, tell another of their artless histories and in the telling unloose a moderate amount of laughter.

Toward the end of the second act, the novelist father discovers that his cook is his own mother. Previously, it seems, he has been a humble and happily ignorant Irish youth with an itch to write stories. He made money easily enough, but was always worried about the college education he had missed. His son was to go to college and proceed from there to the composition of deathless literature instead of the ephemeral magazine humor which paid the family bills so promptly. The son preferred business. Only his affection for a girl who could write palliated his father's incredulous discomfiture.

The vaudeville experience of J. C. Nugent is usually visible through the fabric of the manuscript. His lack of simplicity and directness of attack on a full-length play diffuse the cumulative effect. His playing is characteristic. Elliott Nugent contrives miraculously to look and talk in a manner actually reminiscent of college boys. Ruth Nugent is pretty and Mary Shaw gives a notable performance as the Irish cook.

Alexander Woollcott--"A strangely miscellaneous comedy. . . . The Marxes remain our favorite American family."

The New York Times--"A good deal that is genuinely entertaining."

Follies, Fall Edition. Mr. Ziegfeld has caused to have inserted in the daily press tidings that henceforth the Follies will remain in Manhattan the year 'round. To the end that their popularity shall not diminish, he reports that three times after the opening he will invigorate the exercises with new material. The first of these invigorations is now on sale. The new ingredients are the Russian Lilliputians and Mitty and Tillio, French dancers; a pair of athletes called the Athenas; and new acts for Vivienne Segal, Lupino Lane, and minor revision in the monolog of Will Rogers.

Both the Lilliputians and Mitty and Tillio are regarded in Paris as belonging to the enthusiastic category of the "wows." In the Ziegfeld Follies, they seemed only pretty good. The former did a wooden soldiers march that might have created feverish rejoicing if wooden soldiers had not already marched so many miles across our stages. Mitty and Tillio did "The Phantom Ship" and "The Mirage," both of which stick pleasantly in the memories of most of those who have recently been to Paris.

The dancing of Ann Pennington, the meditations of Will Rogers and the political speech of Tom Lewis remain the favorites of the current Follies family.

Percy Hammond--"The Follies continues to be the best of the shape-shows, no matter what they do to it."

Alloy. Through the fourth wall of a miserable millworker's hut in a steel town the audience is permitted to gaze at one of the most sordidly natural tragedies now open for inspection. It is a man-and-wife tragedy. The man is a drunkard and a beast. The woman is driven into the protecting arms of the family boarder. Vigorously written and vividly performed by Minna Gombell, the part of the girl carries the evening's interest. The saccharine platitudes and copybook virtue of the boarder (Ivan Miller), take the edge off the climax. If he were an individual rather than a clipping from a Y.M.C.A. pamphlet, the play would be decidedly engrossing. Under the circumstances, it is a capable but not a compelling contribution to the season's lists.

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. A big, red apple--surrounded by rouge pots, pencil and puff for eyebrow and cheek--sat on a star's dressing table. Outside the rhythmic recall of an actress before the curtain attested the audience's approval. The clapping rose and fell, mingled with cheers, finally lingered and fell. The dressing-room door swung open and Ethel Barrymore appeared, beautiful, a little tired perhaps, excited and again successful. The big red apple seemed to smile and glisten with importance. It was Uncle John Drew's gift and its presence signaled another Barrymore opening.

"Speak your piece good and you will get a big red apple," was an early rural maxim that caught in John Drew's memory. When his niece Ethel appeared 23 years ago in her first star part (Clyde Fitch's Captain Jinks, he gave her a large red apple. It was the initiation of a custom which he has built into a Barrymore tradition.

These and many other magic facts one finds while burrowing through the pages of My Years on the Stage-- by John Drew. One finds that Lionel Barrymore (46) is the oldest, Ethel (45) next and John (42) the Barrymore baby. This was the family of Maurice (Blythe) Barrymore and Georgie Drew. Georgie and John Drew were children of an elder John and his wife Louisa. All were actors. The blood and training of nine generations in the theatre has combined to make three of the greatest in our generation.

Since this is Ethel Barrymore's opening night, we must perforce pass by the brilliant Barrymore brothers. John is pottering about with various plays; and accurate chroniclers have it that he will not appear in the U. S. at all this year. Lionel and his lately acquired wife, Irene Fenwick, are touring in Belasco's Laugh, Clown, Laugh.

Miss Barrymore is one of the most beloved figures on our stage, one of the greatest workers, and a true traditionalist. Few actresses in her position work year in and year out, in Manhattan and away, on the legitimate stage and in vaudeville, almost without a break. Actors are born wanderers; the craft arose in the tradition of the strolling player. Nowadays, an actor fancies to stay in Manhattan, possibly with short runs in Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Boston. The dwindling of good road shows is not due to the cinema, but in a large measure to the refusal of good performers to undertake the hardships of provincial travel. Not so Ethel Barrymore. She is a trouper, honoring her followers throughout the smaller cities. Last season she toured. Now she is back again as "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray."

This part had been properly regarded for many years as the property of Mrs. Patrick Campbell who, as Paula Tanqueray, won her first great success in 1893. It was last played in this country at Wallack's Theatre at a benefit many years ago by Mrs. Campbell. When Ethel Barrymore assumed the role, comparisons were inevitable.

The part portrays a woman of rusty reputation who hopes to obtain position and happiness through a favorable marriage. In the opening act, most critics agreed, Miss Barrymore was heavy, rasping and overloud. The Campbell tradition calls for a flexibility, lightness and humor, which Miss Barrymore possesses preeminently but elected to omit in her interpretation. In the later acts, as calamaties gather, she was accorded universal admiration. The final half hour is one of the great things of her career. The play, for all its years, stands up stably enough.

Thus the curtain fell and cheers echoed from the auditorium to the little dressing-room where the big red apple waited on the table. Many productions had come and gone since the first red apple appeared at the premiere of Captain Jinks. And many eulogies have been spoken since that time, and much criticism written. But none of it is as true as trie three sentences which came from the gallery of the old Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, when Captain Jinks had its opening performance preparatory to the Manhattan run. It was Miss Barrymore's first long and important role. She was somewhat nervous with her opening lines, and not quite audible.

"Speak up, Ethel," called a god of the gallery. "You're all right. The Drews is all good actors."

Heywood Broun--"An uneven performance in an indifferent play."

Alexander Woollcott--"A still engrossing play . . . brought to glowing life by the magnificence of Ethel Barrymore."

*My YEARS ON THE STAGE--John Drew-- Button ($5.00).