Familiar as we are with the French revolution, used as a stage motive, “The Red Carnation” threw such a new light upon it all, that we were a trifle dumfounded. Miss Tyler gracefully revised it for us, and made it appear as a somewhat gay and frolicsome time. Moreover, it had all the modern improvements. It seemed to be steam-heated and electric-lighted, and although Marie Antoinette did not make her entrance in an automobile, you felt that it was waiting outside. Historians, interested in the French revolution, might get some valuable sidelights from Miss Odette Tyler’s idea of it. The actress herself has an agreeable personality and considerable ability.
The other “star” to whom I have fitfully alluded—Miss Eugenie Blair—has much vogue outside of New York. She came to the Murray Hill Theater with a version of Wilkie Collins’ much-abused “New Magdalen,” which was called “Her Second Life.” This being her life number two, you felt a distinct sensation of relief that you were spared a glimpse at lives numbers one and three. It was such a very crude performance that I should not have dragged it into this record had it not been for the fact that Miss Blair was part of the singular display of celestial bodies that I have tried to indicate in this article. She is a weighty actress corporeally, if not artistically, and poor Mercy Merrick fared rather badly. This Wilkie Collins heroine has been neglected of late, in favor of such base subterfuges as figures of the Nancy Stair caliber, but certain signs point to revivals of “The New Magdalen,” which as an emotional story has seldom been surpassed. Compared with the pitiful puppet “romances” of to-day, this genuine piece of throbbing fiction seems to be in distinctly another class.
Mr. Frank Keenan, with whose praiseworthy effort to emulate the tactics of M. Antoine in Paris my readers are familiar, gave up the Berkeley Lyceum ghost, unable to weather the storm and stress of experiment. While admiring Mr. Keenan’s energy, and appreciating the little one-act bills that he offered with such rapid-transit celerity, it is impossible to avoid deprecating the lack of logical foresight that he manifested.
He trifled with our young affections, aroused our enthusiasm and inspired in us the belief that a permanent institution was inevitable, and then—quietly dropped out. In other walks of life, people who make experiments have generally supplied themselves with the wherewithal to wait while their schemes approach fruition. Rome was not built in a day, but if the builders thereof had been actors, Rome never would have been built at all! The actor, who is usually a singularly unbalanced person, looks for immediate success, and can endure nothing else.
Why Mr. Keenan should have expected to jump into a whirlwind of instantaneous applause is an enigma. Nothing that is out of the conventional rut succeeds at the start. There must be patience, perseverance and a struggle. Otherwise life would be very easy, which it is not. The rosy little scheme at the Berkeley Lyceum had attracted considerable attention. Critics paid homage to every change of bill, anxious to chronicle success, and looking with glad eyes at the possible advent of a new impetus to the jaded theatrical machine. They had worked themselves into the most appreciative state of mind. Lo, and behold! After a few weeks, M. Antoine’s American imitator evaporated. Lack of funds!
What a dismal lack of those funds there must have been when the enterprise started! Who but an actor would embark upon a scheme, and project such radiant promises in the interests of those who are tired of wallowing in the trough of vulgar “popularity,” when it was apparent that, without that popularity, the thing couldn’t last more than a month? Mr. Keenan should apologize to M. Antoine, of Paris. He took his name in vain. People with new ideas, opposed to the conventionality of the old ones, expect naturally to bide their time before the public unhesitatingly accepts them. If Mr. Keenan had engaged in his alluring pursuit, willing and even anxious to “lose money” before he made it, a very different story would have been told.
People ask why dramatic chroniclers grow cynical. The answer is simple. They feel that they are persistently “jollied” along, and they assuredly are. It was so in the case of the Berkeley Lyceum plan that fell through simply because money failed to pour into the box office, and M. Antoine, of Paris, lacked the vitality of Barnum & Bailey’s circus! It was so last year when Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld tried to “elevate” the stage with the Century Players. This is an age of get-rich-quickly, and there is no other object. Actors talk of art, and of unconventionality; they inveigh against commercialism and pose most picturesquely. But they are in such a hurry to spear the florid, bloated body of easy success that they cannot wait. Mr. Frank Keenan went direct from M. Antoine’s Parisian plan to vaudeville!
The little play upon which he relied to turn the tide of dollars in his direction was called “A Passion in a Suburb,” and was described as “a psychological study of madness,” by Algernon Boyesen. It was horror for the sake of horror, which is always distressing, and it was a failure. It was food neither for the elect nor for the mob. Both classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be accepted as the logical sequence of some startling train of events. But to enter a playhouse and watch a couple of murders for no other reason than that the murderer was a madman, is not enlivening. It is ghoulish.
I have devoted much space to Mr. Frank Keenan and his plan. I was sorry for him until I thought it all over. Then I couldn’t help feeling a bit sore. It was all very foolish. The bubble was pricked so quickly! It is a consolation to reflect that the New York critics did everything in their power to push along a project that would have been of great value to this metropolis. It was foredoomed to failure, because it depended upon the iniquity known as “quick returns.” De mortuis nil nisi bonum. (I think I have, though!)
That a one-act play is fully able to create a veritable sensation, as keen as any that a five-act drama might evoke, was instanced at the Manhattan Theater, when Mrs. Fiske produced a little drama, written by herself, and called “A Light from St. Agnes.” I think I may say that it was the finest and most artistic one-act play that I have ever seen—and I’ve seen a few in my day. It aroused a matinée audience, on a warm afternoon, to an ecstasy of enthusiastic approval, because it appealed directly to the artistic fiber.