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SAY what you will—and who has a better right?—about the present theatrical season, it has been a great little year for sex. The producers have gone in for it, not in the ecstatic, young-Shelley manner, but in a good, practical way. And, as history has so often shown us, there is big money in it. Mr. David Belasco, who gave us “The Harem,” “Ladies of the Evening,” and “The Dove,” confided to the public press that whenever he passes what he adroitly nicknames “a little painted lady,” he takes off his hat. He ought to throw it in the air.
Even some of our first ladies of the stage have taken it up,—oh, in a nice way, of course, covering it genteelly with frills of imitation lace and sprays of artificial roses. Thus, Miss Jane Cowl, in “The Depths,” does, it is true, play a h-rl-t, but with what a heart of gold, with what a gift for discoursing on love and lust, with what a penchant for gazing upon a picture of the Madonna! Surely, you will concede, there is not a headache in a barrelful of that. Come and bring Aunt Fannie.
And Miss Grace George, in her own adaptation of Paul Geraldy’s “She Had to Know”—a name which many of our theatre-goers are having such an amusing time getting mixed up with that other little dandy in the way of titles, “They Knew What They Wanted”—is giving a charming and highly skillful performance in a comedy about a lady who seeks to find out whether or not she has sex appeal, answer yes or no, But, we can’t add quickly enough, this is referred to throughout only as “appeal”; that one little word of three letters that has made so many the happiest man in the world is delicately omitted.
“She Had to Know” is decidedly amusing, although it does get a bit—shall we say tenuous? We'd just as soon, if you would. It is the sort of well-mannered piece that ought to have Bruce McRae in it, and, oddly enough, always does have him.
In “The Dark Angel,” sex does not form the plot of the piece. There is, now that we recall it, that playwrights’ snug harbor, the Misstep, taken, as is customary, when the heroine was but a slip of a girl—there’s the joke in there somewhere, but it really wouldn’t pay you for your time. But, these days, what’s a misstep, between friends? “The Dark Angel” is primarily a play, and an interesting one, too, of sentiment and noble natures and courage and titled British rotters and all sorts of grand things.
It is the story, not to keep you waiting, of the blinded soldier who gives her up to the other man. In tribute to the author, we bashfully admit that we wept, and lavishly: on the other hand, it is but fair to confess that we are that way. All you have to do is drop a hat, and if we are in any kind of form we will break down and cry like a little tired child. At any rate, we paid tears to “The Dark Angel.” Take it or leave it or good red herring.
The author, Mr. Trevelyan—which name, they do say, is artfully composed of the letters forming the words “Guy Bolton"—has told his tale with skill, and flashes of curious beauty, and engaging comedy lines; and, also, with occasional outbursts about the primroses and linnets and the little Jenny Wrens, during which it is always your privilege to get under your seat and play cat’s cradle. Patricia Collinge, who has given away a large block of her surplus sweetness to some poor family, does fine work as the heroine, and Reginald Mason is entirely good as the blinded soldier, There are entertaining bits, too, by Joan MacLean and Auriol Lee. In short, an interesting evening, or we are a toe dancer.
Representing the revue world, in the new entertainments, is the practically annual Miss Elsie Janis, in, to date, the best of her shows, which some mental giant has entitled “Puzzles of 1925.” It has Jimmy Hussey, a perfectly elegant jazz band, and Miss Janis in amazing impersonations of people heretofore considered inimitable. Miss Janis, besides being the major portion of the works of the show, has produced it herself, and has even gone so far as to make up its lyrics, apparently out of what was left in the ice-box after Sunday night’s supper.
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The New Plays
The Dove. At the Empire. Mr. Belasco shooting the works on a new Willard Mack script.
The Dark Angel. At the Longacre. An interesting play of post-war England showing the effect of demobilization and Michael Arlen on Guy Bolton.
The Rat. At the Colonial. An Apache melodrama palpably written by a seasoned emotional actress and a comely movie actor.
The Good Bad Woman. At the Comedy. One of those plays that calls a spade a dirty lousy spade.
Loggerheads. At the Cherry Lane. One of those Irish plays entirely that need not have been produced at all, at all.
ON DIT
The playboy of the New York Sun, who yields only to Mrs. Janis (and then only after a scuffle) in his admiration for Elsie Janis, did permit himself some mild parenthetical carping in his review of her gay extravaganza now prospering at the Fulton. There ought, he said, to be some word about her lyrics. And the word, he feared, would be the word “appalling.” This heretical utterance was duly quoted in the advertisements on the following Sunday—the advertisement having been composed by none other than Charles B. Dillingham, who used to be dramatic editor of the came Evening Sun himself in the days when Charlotte Cushman was playing Peter Pan. Mr. Dillingham, at times the most pouty, but ever and always the most waggish of the producers, did take the precaution to make a slight change in the utterance before paying for its repub-
