THE DRAMATIC SEASON’S LAST MOMENT
By Alan Dale
Going—going——
Just as, with a sputter and a flicker and a last expiring tremor, we had begun to realize that the going season was, indeed, nearly gone, something happened. There was a rally, and a brief return to animation. The corpselike season sat up and waved its hands. An electric current, applied to its extremities by one admirable actress and one enterprising manager, was the cause of this surprising change, and the writing of epitaphs was temporarily postponed.
The return of the season to a semblance of interesting activity was due to the arrival in our midst of Miss Marie Tempest, who came from England just as the sad troupe of her unsuccessful countrymen had returned to that land. Miss Tempest, with a woman’s daring, and the true spirit of “cussedness,” took every risk, and, though even the enthusiastic and misinformed London papers have been obliged to avoid pet allusions to the “furore created in America” by the unfortunate English actors who failed here this season, the admirable little comedienne had no qualms.
Nor had her manager, Mr. Charles Frohman. It is pleasant, at times, to record managerial enterprise that cannot possibly be a bid for pecuniary reward. Mr. Frohman, whose name is often unfortunately mentioned in connection with the sad, cruel, oppressive, commercial speculators in dramatic “goods,” belongs absolutely and utterly to another class. It is ten thousand pities that the enthusiasm and real artistic fervor of this undaunted, farseeing manager should be shadowed by this association. Mr. Frohman actually sent Miss Marie Tempest and her English company over from London for a short stay here of four weeks, merely to let us sample her new play, “The Freedom of Suzanne,” that had been so well received in England.
Those who try to tar Mr. Frohman with the commercial brush will readily perceive their error. Had Miss Tempest packed the Empire Theater at every performance, the enormous expenses of this undertaking could never have been defrayed. The manager did not quiver. The actress—viewing the return of her countrymen, with flaccid pocketbooks, from the land of dollars—had no misgivings. She came, and she saw, and she conquered.
Miss Tempest, in “The Freedom of Suzanne,” was worth waiting for. She was worth suffering for. We were perfectly willing to admit that the season was over, and we were not sorry, for it was one of the worst on record. But to the Empire we trooped to sample this last offering, and it was so good, and so delightful, that it flicked the season back for a month. Miss Tempest had a first-night audience that gave the “among-those-present” chroniclers quite a tussle. It seemed like early September, when theatrical hopes run high, and the demon of disillusion is not even a cloud as big as a man’s hand.
Since Marie Tempest left musical comedy—that sinking ship—to its fate, and devoted herself to the development of her own unique gifts as a comedienne, her husband, Mr. Cosmo Gordon Lennox, has been the tailor that made the plays fit. If a playwriting husband can’t fit his own wife, then his capabilities must surely be limited. Mr. Lennox proved, in “The Marriage of Kitty” last year, that he quite understood the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of the clever little actress, and knew exactly how to make them salient. Although English, nobody could accuse Miss Tempest of being a “bread-and-butter miss.” The most vivid imagination could never associate her with a white muslin gown, a pretty blue sash, a Christmas-card expression of surprised innocence, and the “prunes and prisms” attendant upon those luxuries.