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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (March 14, 1920)
10 s VTHE OMAHA SUNDAY BEE : MARCH 14. 1920. John Barrymore a Great "Richard"v By BURNS MANTLE. VTEW YORK.1 (Special Corre- l spondence. Probably there " ' were- not 50 persons in the aodience at the Plymouth theater the. night John Barrymore made what he terms his "audience plunge" into the classics with "The Tragedy of Richard III" who would recog nize, a "great" Richard if they were to meet one. And yet all the talk the next day was of "great" Rich ards and "good" Richards and of the younger Barrymore's place among them. The answer is simple, lie is a great Richard, else he could not have held 1,800 persons in their seats until a quarter before 1 o'clock in the morning to see him play Richard. Not in this day of weekly blizzards, uncertain commutation and little interest in Shakespeare. He is a great Richard, too, in being a new Richard. He probably never saw the part played, and I doubt if he had much coaching from those who offered to help him. He is of a mind these days to do things in his "own way. Thus he is, un shackled by convention or tradition. He reads the text naturally and not jirmiusically, as it appeals to hinv stressing with the enthflsiasm of a boy who has discovered a new ghost story the fiendish imaginings of hell's famous conspirator. He plays Richard with the same zest that, as young cartoonist, he drew weirdly grotesque and fascin atingly misshapen humans. He ex tracts a certain joy from dragging Jhe shortened leg,' weighted with armor; in favorinsr the withered arm, and in bending forward, when the situation is right, so the crooked back may add its bulge to the pic ture. Occasionally, when the scene and the speech appeal to him he is apt to forget his deformities and to stand erect, defying all and sundry, not as the envenomed Pantaganet, but as himself, John Barrymore, Richard's most understanding friend. He fairly dotes on the scraggly black wig that changes completely his expression and the lines of his finely chiseled features.' He is not a strong Richard, in a physical sense. He could not have been a terror in the field, nor slain reasonably whole groups of his ar mored enemies. He is crafty, sin ister, deceitful, subtle, and is careful to make tt plain that from his quar rel with the fate that sent him into the world an ugly and a crippled thing is sprung his passion for power and the satisfaction of being iiililillllilllllllllllllllliiilillillillilllilllliilllllllllllllllillililllilllllllillllllllllllllllli! T-O-D-A-Y Matinee and Eve. and Monday night America's Greatest Colored Show The Smarter Set Headed by tHe Foremost Comedians SALEM TUTT WHITNEY & J. HOMER TUTT Presenting Their, Latest Musical Creation "The Children of the Sun" By George Wells Parker of this city. Prices Evenings, 25c to $1.50; Mat. Tocfay,25c to $1 Tuesday and Wednesday March 16-17 Matinee Wednesday ftxmTpiumpwakt .DasndDelasoo 1 Preaentr FRINGES . , STARR. fr the supreme txxxssoT kcr brilliant career. Knobloek'jr rotabl play OGEE?! TheUnfinal and EacauiJrtr1 under the personal directs of a. nr a UBtffifulfhfdfiI.Lrt, ProduWJMPfecr woowl Seats on Sale. Nights 50c to $2.50. Wednesday Matinee 50c tor $2.00. A OneNight Only-Next Sunday, March 21st Annual Tour of the World's Greatest Minstrel Organization Gus Hill's Big Minstrels The most stupendous consolidation of Solo Singers, Star Dancers and Hilarious Comedians ever assembled in one company. March 22-23-24 Matinee Wednesday W-iJM W f! 1 I 1 I U 11 ml D Q9DGRT LCUI5 STEVENSta's Seats Tomorrow. Night Matinee Wednesday 50c 10 $1.-50. riiMiiitiiii" UMiiiiiiiimiiniiuiiii iiOiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiifel dun r ERANDEIS THEATtX Hua, THE TUESDAY MUSICAL CLUB a swaesf TpsBflf March IS, At iI8.x MABEL GARRISON Soprano, Mibaoalltan Opera n ,mjimT JOHN QUINE Baritono even with God by doing Satan's bidding. In humor he i not lacking and yet in his -wooing of the widowed Ann. following close upon his mur der of her husband and her father, which many Richards havep layed with obvious smirks at the audience, he is so earnest and so gentle in his pleading, the success of his suit be comes the more understandable, though the scene is made theatri tally less effective. , tie is, not to use more space in saying so, a great Richard in being a fascinating Richard who bv daring to be himself gives new life to an old tragedy that only such treat ment could successfully revive for this particular generation of play goers. 4 In the version of the tragedythat has been patched together for Mr. Barrymore's use, five scenes are taken from the preceding play of "King Henry VI." They are used as a sort of sketchy prologue, with the hope, no doubt, of clarifying for a modern audience the situation as it affected the houses of Lancaster and York at the moment of Richard's de termination to cleave his way to the throne. Thus a couple of sightly murders (those of Henry and Ed ward) are added to the entertain ment, Edward being slain on the field of Tewkesbury and Henry in ar iron cage in the tower. This ver sion also permits the use oi the lit tle known but informative soliloquy beginning, "Would he (Edward IV) were wasted, marrow- bones and all, that from his loins no hopeful branch may spring to cross me from the golden time 1 hope for." In general, however, the added scenes complicate with new char acters and obscuring speeches as much as tliey clear up the' story, and add little that the older acting ver sions, which employed but one, or at most two, of the scenes from "Henry VI." did not contain. After the first act the. tragedy proper is played, the action around Richard exclusively. Let the classicists quar rel as to whether or not they were wisely made. The cast is mostly English and thoroughly competent. It includes Leslie Palmer as Buckingham, E. J. BalUntinc as Clarence, Arthur Row as Kir.g Henry, Reginald Den ny as Edward, Mrs. Thomas Wise as the Duchess of York, Evelyn Hall as Elizabeth, Helen Robbins as Anne, and Stanley Warmington as Catesby. Robert Edmund Jones' settings are impressive in Jboth the simplicity cf the inner scenes and the massivetiess of the tower. At the end cf the second act Ethel and Lionel Barrymore and John Drew took their places in an upper box and the happy audience applauded them. fc In Percy iMackaye's "George Washington" we first meet "the man who made us," which is the author's subtitle,- when he was a farmer lad at Mount Vernon and just after he had completed a par- "OMAHA'S FUN CENTER" I Daily Mat. 15-2S-50c rEvnff., 2S-50-7SC 91 ' Cha. Waldron Praatnts THEBOSTOHIANSb. With, the Author-Actor Frank Funny Finney V&h1 Beauty Chora, of Bean Eating Boston Girl LADIES' DIME MATINEE WEEK DAYS tfSWS ? ' m I (MPflE5S)WeS0A t 4f , : Forenze Sempest Miss. Ovandos (fit PRESS) ticularly good job of surveying Lord Fairfax's acres. He is then a husky boy of 23 and much inter ested in scientific arming. More interested in farming, in fact, than he is in the girls, who already are beginning to irritate him. To avoid them he slips off and marries the widow Custis and brings her home as Martha Washington. And that is the first act. Next we discover the "Liberty Boys" becoming active. - A group of them surround King's (now Colum bia) college, acting much like groups of radicals usually act, and threatening to ride the Tory cooper on a rail to prove their contempt of King George and all his adher ents. Then appears young Alexan der Hamilton to harangue the mob into good humor and take their minds off the defiant professor long enough to permit him to escape. Jumping back to Mount Vernon, we find the loyal Martha buckling on George's sword and promising to wait for hirn under the sycamores, or at least to be there when he shall come home from the wars. Next scene we find the general settling a a dispute between " the Massachu chusetts "Johnnies" and the Vir ginia "Jennies" in the first rainbow division to gather in these states. Then we have an impressive pic ture of Washington reading a para graph from the declaration of inde pendence (accepted locally as a timely protest against the eighteenth amendment) and proceed thence to the shores of the Dela ware with Tom Paine and Alexan der Hamilton exchanging greetings and philosophies in the foreground and Washington pacing the back ground, depressed and heart-broken because none of his division is ready to risk the crossing with him at dawn. Thirdly, we are at Valley Forge, where, thanks to one of those muddling congresses from which many citizens still are forced to accept- their ancestors and pretend to E VF1 ULFLKXIj ))) - PERSONAL DIRECT (ON OF W.LEDOUX-AfFfUATEO WITH ASSOCIATION-B R KEITHS AND STANDARD ACT5-y5LL SHOWS ,Q WESTERN VAUDEVILLE MANAGERS ORPHEUS) CIRCUITS - ANO PLAYING ONLY BI6 TIMtv ARC CHOSEN FOR THEIR ENTERTAIN lMCJ DUALITIES A 7 1 i .i - r -. bi. m m iiiiiiiiifiiiiiiiif a atr u ma m 11 i i i i i i i i i i i i i m 't i I M l It's the Cook That Has the Heart Appeal PRANCES STARR who play, the part of Sally, the engaging cook, in capt. Edward Knob locks remarkable aex drama. "Tigerl Tiger!" which will be seen at the Brandeis this week, has opinions quite as convincing as Meredith who long ago avowed "civilized man can't live without cooks. "In choosing a cook as the hero. of his piece," the star of the play saia recently, "tne playwright chose the primitive woman, and the kitchen of today comes nearer be ing the background of such a type than any place in the modern home. In fact it seems to me that the kitchen is, now the one and only place in the home where woman is absolutely and always her true self. There she reverts to tvpe and one sees her as she is without any of the externals that mean so much to a woman only because she thinks they mean so much to man. "The kitchen in a house it seems to me, is somehow its heart its throbbing, beating center of activity We can live without drawing rooms and libraries, without boudoirs and dressing rooms, even at a pinch we can make-shift somehow for a bed room, but there must be a kitchen if tt ts to be a home. "There never was a real woman," Frances Starr continued, "who wasn t at heart a cook. It is the woman nature to wish to minister to man, and food in this life is the first necessity to man's happi ness and well being. Again it bally had been a stenographer, or say a bookkeeper, the play could never have hap pened. Knoblock knew his types. He knew the appeal that the healthy and splendid vitality of the country girl made to the blase man of the town. He was sick of mentality. Fed up on theories, and consequently a victim marked for the first all feminine primitive worn an who crossed his path and of course the affair was all the more inevitable when the man in the case met her in the spring moonlight, nenr, where lilacs were in bloom. "I worked longest on my make up for the part," Miss Starr said. 'The Monde hair is not my own 'touched up' as many seem to think. It is a golden wig. It makes me rounder, more mature. And that is my-idea of Sally. She is nearest like 'Tess' and she comes from that part of the country. I have tried to create the illusion of a woman, fashioned of Devonshire clotted cream and strawberries, warm with do so with pride, 3,000 of the faith ful troops are left "naked and starv ing" the winter through. But here the light begins to shine with the -irrival of Lafayette and the promise- of aid from overseas, and next scene we are at the edge of Yorktown with Washington, Knox and Colonel Nicola describing the bombardment that finally flashes, white and blue to indicate a victory won. And lastly we are taken back to Mount Vernon, wheta the fighter who would a-farming go returns, to Martha and the syca mores. . It is not on the whole, an im pressive spectacle. The poet Mac kaye has labored earnestly and brought forth a masque for children and patriotic holidays that missea the holding quality of drama. It serves "to humanize and creditably to visualize the father of his coun try and there are moments when it flares with the inspiration of Rreat historical moments. But generally it is crude and choppy and does not compare with John Drinkwater's drama of "Abraham Lincoln." Walter llampden is a human and at times an eloquent Washington and the snpporting cast is compe tent without being distinguished. George Marion reads the interludes splendidly, but his effort at singing the folk songs is a little painful. sunshine, vivid with life and ready to love and to be loved." . t r t The action of the play opens in the luxurious apartments of Clivt Couper, member of parliament, bored and lacking interest in the concrete things of life and utterly unmoved by the love of the beautiful daughter of his old friend. Then comes into his life a little servant girl, a cook, whom he picks up in the street, and they enter into an il licit love affair which continues for two veari. It is to the unlttir(t girl of the masses that the awaken. nig mine ratucr mail .to me cul tured and gifted man of the world. The scene at tlu rln of thr thirA act, when Sally renounces her lover and at last confesses to him and to herself that the end had come, is spoken of by New York critics as tne most pcwtriui dramatic situa tion ever shown mi thr FncrllcU- speaking stage, and Miss Starr and Lionet Atwill both rise fullv tn it tremendous possibilities. 1 Miss Starr's sunnortinir east ia the identical original rnmmnv in. tact, exactly as seen on Broadway, including, in addition to Lionel At wilL Frederick Llnvd. Wallar Pn. kine, Whitford Kane, Thomas Lou den, Mary Moore, Daisy Belmore and Helen Andrews. -. Otis Skinner, who comes to the Brandeis in "Pietro" in a recent conversation regarding the various feeling actors undergo on first nights, said: 'A first niKht v is formidable. enough at any time of life. You have all the natural buovancv. the exhilaration of expectancy, which amounts almost to hysteria, to hold in check. Of course, different ac tors take it differently. Some arc naturally phlegmatic. Indeed, I can recall occasions, when I was mv own producer, stage manager, car penter and leading man, when the whole burden and weight of detail so oppressed me that on the open ing night I was under my part rather than over it I like to ko to the theater on mv first nieht without the faintest consciousness of any stage detail whatsoever, be cause I want to feel that all these things have been intelligently pro vided. Of course, the natural ten dency on first nights is toward an overstraining for effect and too cften one starts out in one's big scenes on such a high key that it is impossible to get it any higher. Still I am not sure that it isn't bet ter to err on the side of hitting your top note too soon than on that of under-expressing your part. For the main thinir is to know your audience. With the exception of the student, the critic and the artist, the public goes to the theater for sensation which is. after all, the fundamental appeal of all art. The part of Hamlet which really catch the average audience are the ghost scene and the play scene with their suggestions of hysteria. In short, the theater is, in a way, a palace of sensation. "Besides. I love mv work, and there is no keener sense of enjoy ment to me than that which exists in the period from the selection of the clay, through all its prepara tion, to its final performance. There is so much lor the actor to study, so muvh that will develop and round out hi3 art. To take his calling seriously is no less an essential for an actor than it is for any other professional man or for any other artist." Aviator Smith Plans Flight Around World London, March 13. Sir Ross Smith, who was knighted for his flight to Australia, is considering a flight around the world, says a Mel bourne cable. .He thinks the trip can be made in 70 days. i:iiiii;iliil;ilii;ii::IMIl:i;.IIIINi:iliii:!li:ii;1ili:iiliil.ilii:il.ilhliil!iliiliiliiriininlliliiliillil:iiniiili(liiiiliiinul!'f) FREE LECTURE I I -by- I 1 ' ; PETER W. COLLINS of Boston , National Lecturer of Knights of Columbus I BOLSHEVISM, THE RED MENACE MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM .. I Tuesday Evening, March 16, 8 o'CIock - Admission Free Questions Answered The Public Invited Space Reserved for Veterans of the World War 5 S Iilnli;iili;liji:liili!iilMlililiiliilliiili:liiliiiil:iliilNI"llilliliili:liillliili:l"l,il"i''lll"i'l"tiilillrliJ!il.;ii l.il 0000000000008 X II kterpsichoreaTx TO !! .C A -w s v ytl I 1 1 I I 1 I I 1 1 1 1 - I IT lancu itvAt ti OPKDY ' jcreen briars , at Home Ttnd Around Studio PATHE WEEKLY h nnpaon SkaZV m MM M vi VA WEEK STARTING SUNDAY, MARCH 14 MATINEE DAILY 2:15 EVERY NIGHT :1S Sacond Edition of THE 4 MORTONS 5am, Kitty, Martha and "THEN AND NOW" Homer B. Marg ucrita MASON ft KEELER Praaantins a Ona-Act Play MARRIED" MACRAE & CLEGG . Tha Intruder "THE QUEEN OF THE WHEEL" FL0RENZE TEMPEST in "TUMBLE IN LOVE" Alton Allan PREVOST & COULET In A VAUDEVILLE MELANGE LYONS ft Y0SC0 Intraductal Tbalr Own Excluaiva Compoaitiona RUTH BUDD Taa GW With tha Saalte TOPICS OF THE JAY KINOCRAM5 Nichta, ISe to t I.OOi Sundayo and Hotldaya law at SI Mt Matinaaa, 15c to 7Sc (Patrona Pajr War Tax.) -: Mans SOe to tftl,t, an Sola March JS No War fan. V