Brooklyn Life from Brooklyn, New York • Page 7

BROOKLYN LIFE. 7 Croker-King, are to be put down in the tables of good players. There is competence without exaggeration in their work, and that may lead to much. GOVERNOR'S LADY." -The writer is fain to confess that he is somewhat perplexed at what appears to him the extravagant praise lavished by many of the newspaper reviewers upon this latest Belasco production, which, having first been tried out successfully in Philadelphia last spring, had its initial presentation in New York at the Republic Theater last week Tuesday evening. To be accurate perhaps I should have said the praise lavished on the play rather than on the production, since as a theatrical production it out-Belascos even Belasco.

Thanks to his genius, which may truly be defined as "an infinite capacity for taking pains," its dramatic deficiencies are tolerably well covered up so that at times it is even capable of touching the heart chords, yet in spite of the perfection of the acting and the realism of innumerable incidental details, the glaring absurdities of the piece can scarcely fail to obtrude themselves upon the mind of anyone not entirely devoid of the analytical faculty. In short the play itself is wanting in those essential elements of good drama, consistency and credibility. The action is frequently arbitrary, the characters making their appearance fortuitously whenever their presence is required by the playwright regardless of probability and their actions are at times so selfcontradictory as to arouse skepticism. The theme is an old familiar one. In this version, Daniel Slade has risen rapidly from the position of a humble toiler in the mines to affluence and prominence.

In the same brief period he has acquired polish, as well as political ambition, while his devoted wife remains as humble, dowdy and devoid of ambition as at the start. This itself hardly seems credible, but considering that he is represented to the end as a devoted and loving husband while nevertheless bent upon obtaining a divorce and marrying a woman capable of upholding the dignity of his position, it may be passed over as comparatively plausible. Yet more extraordinary still than conjugal affection and duty being subordinated to personal ambition, is the willingness of a girl, already engaged to a man she really and truly loves, to break her engagement in order to accept the offer of a man she does not love, who does not love her and who she knows is getting a divorce merely in order to marry her. She has not even the excuse of poverty. Her only possible excuse is that her father, a Senator, is a helpless tool in the hands of Slade, who has bought his way into the governorship of the state.

However, she subsequently suffers from remorse and proves in the third act that there is a heart concealed within her, which nobody would have suspected before, by renouncing Slade after a painful interview with his wife. The play ends or rather should end with the third act, in which, after the interview between Mrs. Slade and Katharine Strickland, the Senator's daughter, which is the most effective scene in the play, the latter is forgiven and taken back by her former while Slade, having made overtures of reconciliation to his much abused wife, the latter bitterly upbraids him and closes her denunciation by throwing her wedding ring in his face. This decidedly dramatic and effective climax is artistically marred by an anti-climactical epilogue in which a reconciliation takes place in a Childs restaurant. The restaurant is nevertheless well worth while as a masterpiece of materialistic stage realism and incidentally it ought to be a bull argument for Childs Company stock, preferred and common.

The dramatic crudities here so baldly set forth are of course not nearly so staring when observed through the veil of emotionalism and theatric realism that Belasco has thrown over them. Indeed, so successful has the producer been in distracting attention from them, that one of the best known critics of the daily press overlooks them altogether and goes to the length of pronouncing "The Governor's Lady" a great play and asserting that "it rings bitterly true from beginning to end." Enthusiasm over the acting is certainly well justified and Emma Dunn's portrayal of the single-minded and illiterate but devoted little wife rings remarkably true in its mingling of pathos and humor. Emmett Corrigan as Slade also gives a conspicuously fine impersonation and the others are entirely equal to the demands, but it, is extremely doubtful if the play itself will stamp either Alice Bradley, who is credited with the authorship though she modestly disclaims everything but the idea, or Mr. Belasco himself, as a great playwright, though either one or the other must be, if "The Governor's Lady" is really a "great play." "WITHIN Eltinge THE Forty-second -Bayard Street Veiller's Theater is new decidedly play at a play with a punch--in fact, it has four distinct punches, one in each act. It is melodrama, but melodrama that you don't run across more than once in a theatrical season, if then, and it has the advantage of being produced at a time when everyone is more or less interested in crooks and the police department's methods of dealing with the denizen of the underworld.

The story is extremely interesting and well told, with hardly an unnecessary word nor a character that does not deal directly with the development of the plot. Situation follows situation, the climax being reached with such effect that not for one moment does the audience's interest relax. A shop girl, Mary Turner, is falsely accused of theft and sentenced to three years in prison, the curtain of the first act falling after she gives a very spirited defense of those (Continued on page 32.) ONE OF THE MOST DRAMATIC SCENES IN "THE LITTLEST REBEL," Next week's attraction at the Montauk Theater..