CRITICS BAD WEATHERCOCKS.
Last Season’s Records Proved Inability of Newspaper Writers to Show How Dramatic Winds Were Blowing.
Of what use are dramatic critics anyway? Brady’s attack on them from the stage last winter was a mere pin-prick to the humiliation they must feel as makers of public opinion in connection with “The Lion and the Mouse.” When the play was brought out in New York last fall the comments were almost universally adverse, yet the people took to the piece like ducks to water, and it looks now as if it would run the year round at the Lyceum. When it was tried in London, on the other hand, the reviews were exceedingly favorable, and yet the thing lasted barely two weeks.
Take, for example, the London Daily Telegraph, which summed up its report in these words: “To last night’s audience, let it be added, the piece made evidently a very direct and forcible appeal, the applause at the end of the third act, as on the final fall of the curtain, being of the most tumultuous and enthusiastic description.”
The Standard declared: “‘The Lion and the Mouse’ is a play to be seen—it is imperfect and crude, but it is drama, strong, intense, undeniable.”
The Tribune even went so far in its praise that it felt constrained to add: “As a sop to our national self-respect, however, we may remember that the author, Charles Klein, hails originally from this side of the Atlantic.”