To the pretty whifflings and "ah's!" of every feminine nose present, to the over-a-million-copies-sold waltz-theme that was puckering the mouth of every newsboy in New York, to the rustly settling back into chairs, furs, and standing-room-only attitudes against Corinthian pillars, the hundredth-night, second-act curtain rose on an audience with an additional sense unexpectedly gratified and the souvenir-loving soul of every woman present sniffing its appreciation.
Comedy is a classic prodigal who has wandered far. Comus has discarded his mantle and donned a red nose, a split-up-the-back waistcoat, and a pair of clap-sticks.
Harlequin and Cap-and-Bells have doffed the sock and many colors for the sixty-dollar-a-week rôle of million-dollar pickle-magnate pursuing a forty-dollar juvenile, who, in turn, is pursuing the two-hundred-dollar-a-week Red Widow from Act One—summer hotel at Manhattan Beach to Act Two—tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.
For the hundredth time the opening act of "The Red Widow"—a ghoul at the grave of a hundred musical comedies—sang to its background of white-flannel chorus-men, drop-curtain of too-blue ocean and jungle of cotton-back palms.
A painted ship idled on a painted ocean. Trees reared their tropical leaves into a visible drop-net.
It is the Bay—it is the Bay—it is the Ba-a-ay
Of Love and Bunge-e-e-e-l—
announced the two front rows, kicking backward three times.
It is the Ba-a-a-ay
Of Love and Bunge-e-e-el—
agreed the kicked-at, white-flannel background.
A shapely octet in silk-and-lisle regimentals, black-astrakhan capes flung over one shoulder, and black-astrakhan hats as high as a majordomo's bent eight silk-and-lisle left knees with rhythmic regularity. Six ponies in yellow skirts, as effulgent as inverted chrysanthemums, and led by a black pony with a gold star in her hair, kicked to the wings and adored the audience. A chain of "Bungel belles" stretched their thin arms above their heads in a letter O and prinked about on their toes like bantams in a dust road.