Brooklyn Life from Brooklyn, New York • Page 16

PI ays an a pi ayers. who has knocked about a bit, has been fortunate enough to escape. Possibly the characters in "On With the Dance" occur in Jersey City, Hoboken, North Harlem or points west, but they certainly do not seem to belong in the environment in which Mr. Morton has placed them. The lounge lizard in chief, played in a thoroughly accomplished, elderly lothario fashion by John Mason, is supposed to be a great Wall Street operator from which we infer that Mr.

Morton hails from some agricultural section of the interior. The heroine, played by Eileen Huban, seems to be altogether too much of a lady to be so inveterate a slave to the fascinations of the public dance hall and its habitues. It is, in short, a highly artificial production replete with the kind of banalities which arouse laughter at the wrong time. The cast is a strong one, but is too heavily handicapped to give verisimilitude to an otherwise unconvincing narrative. A strong play might have been written on this theme, but Mr.

Morton has caught nothing but the most superficial aspect of it and filled in the gaps with very commonplace moralizing. The business of shooting John Mason in the third act is effectively done by William Morris, who plays a wronged husband in a very naturalistic manner, while Mr. Mason himself expires in most approved fashion across a table, incidentally spilling the champagne which the waiter had just poured into the glasses, for, as- the author would probably say, he had been "opening wine." ARB ARA." The Plymouth in Forty-fifth Street, the latest addition to the numerous playhouses of the metropolis, was opened to the public for the first time last Monday with the first performance of a play under the above title, by Florence Lincoln. The theme of this play, which is presented by Arthur Hopkins, is rather peculiar even in these THE ORPHEUM. Next week's program at this theater will include the following attractions: Lucile Cavanagh, who, with Frank Hurst and Ted Doner, has a richly staged dancing act; Blossom Seeley, assisted by Five Jazz Harmo- nists, Messrs.

Fields, Salisbury, Davis, Lopez and Thorpe; Rube Marquard and William Dooley, assisted by Helen Clement, in songs, dances and comedy Charles Grapewin, sup-. ported by Anna Chance, in "Poughkeepsie" "The Garden of Aloha" with Libuse Bartusek and Loyal Hawaiians; Joyce, West and Moran; Jim and Marian Harkins Three Jahns and the second week of Belle Baker in an entire new repertoire of songs by Blanche Merrill. THE MAJESTIC The Messrs. Shubert will present John Barrymore, Constance Collier and Lionel Barrymore in John N. Raphael's dramatization of George du Maurier's famous novel, "Peter Ibbetson," at this theater beginning next Monday evening, November twelfth, with matinees Wednes; day andjSaturday.

This great company and will cdme, to Brooklyn after nineteen weeks at the Republic and Forty-eighth Street theaters. The dramatization of George du Maurier's novel proved to be one of the greatest plays of the not only the most brilliant and surprising play of the season, but the one most brilliantly acted. When it was announced that "Peter Ibbetson" would be seen in dramatic form it was thought well nigh inconceivable that any dramatist would be able to transfer to the stage a story so surprising, so novel and imaginative, and yet retain all the amazing occurrences of George du Maurier's romance. That Mr. Raphael was able to accomplish this fact was in itself a dramatic triumph.

The Messrs. Shubert were most fortunate in securing for this drama players who are able, in so striking a manner, to impersonate its important roles. John Barrymore's performance of Peter Ibbetson again demonstrated the extraordinary ability of this young actor. Constance Collier as Mary, Duchess of Towers, repeated in New York the great success she achieved in this role in London. Lionel Barrymore, who returned to the stage after twelve years, in his impersonation of Colonel Ibbetson, contributes one of the best pieces of character acting seen on the stage of our time.

Other than John Constance Collier and Lionel Barrymore, the more important members of the cast are Wallis Clark, Alice John, Mercedes Desmore, Alice Wilson, Alexander Loftus, Benjamin Kauser, Ruano Bogislav, Catherine Charlton and Emily McLean. In Manhattan. "TTHE LOVE DRIVE." It seems almost impossible for Broadway to get away from the exaggerated and the obvious whether it be in undiluted farce or morbid realism. "The Love Drive," which opened at the Criterion on October thirtieth, is neither, though it contains situations long familiar on the stage. These, not infrequently and clumsily used through four acts, show up an audacious and thick-skinned hero in the pursuit of a young woman holding rather exalted views of marriage.

His audacity is an easy vehicle for very persistent allusions to love as seen through sex, and these he thrusts upon all who cross his path, being a little reminiscent perhaps of an early pioneer in this field long since made famous by the adroitness of Bernard Shaw. But CONSTANCE COLLIER this time it is Sidney Rosenfeld who engineers the plot and his hand is not dexterous to say the least. However humor is not lacking, and, granted you accept the mood of the play, you follow with interest the avowals and disavowals of hero and heroine. The dialogue suffers from prolixity and there should be more dramatic flavor throughout such as marks the third act where there is greatest spontaneity. However the cast did much to keep one's attention from the start.

Violet Heming, whose youth and good looks are an asset anywhere, plays the resistant Ernestine Waite. Hilda Spong appears as the Jbuoyant widow, while Fred Niblo reserves his punch for the temperamental Southerner. The middle-aged suitor of considerable avoirdupois and amorous yearnings is taken by? Albert Gran. tr WITH THE DANCE." About two years ago, when the dance craze was at its apogee, or thereabouts, this play might have been timely, if not convincing. As it is, it is.

neither timely nor convincing, since as a form of vice, the dance seems to have been called off. However, as we were long ago told by old Alec Pope and as- the program of this play, which had its first presentation last Monday evening at the Republic plainly informs us: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien as to be hated needs but to be seen" and so the author, Michael Morton, is perhaps- wise in showing us vice as exemplified by the lounge lizard and his female dupes, since it is not likely that having seen the play once we shall be inclined to see it oft, endure it or embrace, though we may continue to pity as it were. Mr. Morton, we take it, is not familiar with any phase of New York social life unless- there are some phases of it which the writer of this commentary, Plays the leading feminine role in "Peter Ibbetson," next week's attraction at the Majestic Theater. days of eugenic and sex drama and apart from the fact that it enables the charming Marie Doro to appear to uncommon advantage as an exponent of the maternal instinct, it must be acknowledged that it neither carries with it any very potent dramatic or emotional appeal nor points any very obvious lesson.

It is of the lightest construction. Charles Lamb, who, needless to say, died a bachelor, wrote a wistful essay about his dream children. Well, Barbara is a young woman in whom the maternal instinct is so overdeveloped that she visualizes and names her dream children even before she is married and when she becomes engaged, thinks of the man to whom she is affianced only as the father of her children. And so when he jilts her to marry another the shock is so great as to upset her reason in such a manner that she continues to live on happily for some years in the companionship of her three imaginary children, for whom she sews and provides toys and does'all the pretty, gentle things that good and loving- mothers invariably do. Eventually, however, an operation is performed which restores her reason and memory and dispels her pleasant dream, but in the end, apparently, she finds solace in marrying her childhood friend and real lover, a doctor, who had refused to have any part in the operation because he would not be a party to destroying her happiness.

The trouble with all this is that while such a case of exaggerated maternal instinct is quite conceivable, it is by no means typical or characteristic so that one looks upon Barbara with the same (Continued on page 18) 16.