Of “The Little Michus,” at Daly’s, and “The Spring Chicken,” at the Gaiety, I am scarcely able to write. Two weeks have elapsed since I saw them, and not a single impression of consequence remains. I remember that I was unutterably bored, but I can’t quite recall which was the duller performance of the two. At the time I compared them both with “The Cingalee,” the New York failure of which I correctly prophesied last summer. I should like to suggest that even in the musical-comedy line I am still able to scent novelty, whenever the slightest aroma occurs. It is the expectation of this that keeps me alive during a performance. Without that expectation I should honestly stay away, for I have arrived at a stage when I am not courting martyrdom.
The George Edwardes shows have of late displayed a marked tendency to a sort of stupefying monotony. Either the fear of risking a new idea, or the hope that the old ones have not become too abjectly ancient, has kept them in the one groove. It is quite remarkable when you come to think of it. Even the supply of people has comparatively failed. The Gaiety girls have married—some of them have even taken unto themselves peers—and a new stock has neglected to materialize. In “The Little Michus,” which is supposed to detail the experiences of two young girls who look precisely alike, but who have been changed at birth, these two prominent rôles were intrusted to Adrienne Augarde and Mabel Green—the latter absolutely unknown. In “The Spring Chicken,” which, I may add, is just as calamitous as its title, it was Miss Gertie Millar who had to uphold the traditions of the Gaiety. A pretty girl, a bright little actress and a fairly melodious warbler is Miss Millar, but George Edwardes used to do better than this.
“Lady Madcap” was the best of the three George Edwardes shows in London. Probably that is why it has been left untouched by the American manager. I do not say that any of these entertainments are worth exporting. To trot such drivel across the Atlantic Ocean, while the United States still has its lunatic asylums with numbers of patients ready and willing to do just such work, seems to me like the sorriest sort of jest. Yet “The Catch of the Season” and “Lady Madcap” have their good points.
What is possibly the best song in London this season occurs in “Lady Madcap.” It is sung by Maurice Farkoa, and is called “I Love You in Velvet.” It has pretty music, clever words and much “catchiness,” and it is so admirably and artistically sung that it redeemed the musical comedy itself, and made it quite endurable.
The star of the performance is J. P. Huntley, a prime London favorite and one who has been very well received in New York. Huntley, like a good many other comedians, is far more useful for flavoring purposes than for a steady diet. There was such a dose of him in “Lady Madcap” that he grew to be a terrible bore. This young actor is to leave the George Edwardes forces and go to the Shubert Brothers, and I can’t help wondering which of the two parties will get tired first. I have my own ideas on the subject, but perhaps it would be advisable not to express them.
So barren is this London season that I have not been able to formulate my plan of dealing with it—you may have guessed as much! There is nothing to wax enthusiastic over, and no one performance that remains, luminous, in the mind. At the New Theater—and isn’t that an absurd title for a playhouse, that, with its actors and audiences, is aging daily?—they are playing “Leah Kleschna,” which Mr. Frohman advertises in the New York manner by a catchline from Mr. Walkley’s criticism in the London Times: “It hits you bang in the eye”—or something equally pretty and graphic. I am not at all sure that it does anything of the sort. It is not looked upon as an epoch-maker, and it lacks the charm of oddity and mystery that was given to it in New York by Mrs. Fiske herself.
We all thought when we saw “Leah Kleschna” at the Manhattan Theater that Mrs. Fiske played a non-star part, and subordinated herself to the others. Let me tell you, however, most emphatically, after having seen “Leah Kleschna” twice in New York and once in London, that Mrs. Fiske herself is its mainstay. She is absolutely its very backbone. Without her, at the New Theater, the piece is but a gloomy melodrama, and as such it is received by the London public. Be quite sure of that. Of course the play itself is cheap, but it masquerades somewhat successfully under the guise of a study in criminology—and all that sort of thing. In New York Mrs. Fiske, by her eccentricities, and various little intellectualities that you recall when you see Miss Lena Ashwell’s tame and bloodless performance in London, helped the illusion. She never quite allowed you to believe that “Leah Kleschna” was outside of her own répertoire of peculiarities.
The play is extremely well acted in London by everybody but Miss Ashwell. She is a weak imitation of Mrs. Fiske’s many bad points—notably her indistinctness of diction. Probably Miss Ashwell never saw Mrs. Fiske in all her life, but Mr. Dion Boucicault, who staged the play in London, must have watched Mrs. Fiske attentively, and have given Miss Ashwell full particulars. At times it was quite ludicrous to listen to the English actress positively affecting the American actress’ most lamentable demerit. She bit up her words, emitted the fragments in a frenzied torrent, sank her voice at critical moments, and did all that Mrs. Fiske has been implored not to do.
Charles Warner, who played the father, threw himself successfully at the part, but forced us to recall his long continuous service in “Drink.” Occasionally Kleschna seemed to have “jim-jams,” and one could not dissociate Mr. Warner from his well-known, world-played performance. Herbert Waring played Raoul extremely well, but the Schram of William Devereaux is not to be compared with the capital interpretation given to the part by William B. Mack in New York. All that Mr. Frohman could do for “Leah Kleschna” he did, but the piece needed Mrs. Fiske. Without her it is of little importance—a sort of old Adelphi play in kid gloves.
A piece that seems to have eluded the “American invasion” is “Mr. Hopkinson,” which has been running for months at Wyndham’s Theater. It is the work of Mr. R. C. Carton, who was responsible, as you may remember, for “The Rich Mrs. Repton,” which ran for three nights or so in New York last season. Perhaps the “American invasion” remembered that, for if nothing succeeds like success, certainly nothing fails like failure.