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The House of Women. Louis Bromfield has won repute as a novelist, which his disciples hope will not be damned by faint plays. Novelist became dramatist last week with a theatricalization of his story The Green Bay Tree. This transference was achieved under the sentient auspices of Arthur Hopkins,* and brought to life upon the stage by such luminaries as Elsie Ferguson and Nance O'Neil. The whole was considerably smaller than the sum of the parts; the general verdict blamed the play.
A story is told of two daughters, one frozen by the memories of a deceased brutal father; the other warmed by the hot blood of his inheritance. The latter increases the world's population by one surreptitiously but serenely. The former is unnaturally intent on nothing but good works. Both, finally, are attracted by an aggressive labor leader. Miss Ferguson is lovely but not always lucid as the looser sister. The best performance of the play is Nance O'Neil's. She portrays the mother, bloody but unbowed after many years of connubial fireworks with the barbaric father.
John Anderson (New York Evening Post) : "Except for the slight but insuperable barrier of authorship I would have thought that Mr. Bromfield hadn't read The Green Bay Tree"
Hidden. David Belasco requests the honor of your presence at a play by William Hurlbut.*The principal performers are Beth Merrill and Philip Merivale; and the subject is sex. Mr. Belasco has held U. S. attention for many years, and sex has held it even longer. But both, unfortunately, have lost to some extent their novelty for playgoers. Time was when a Belasco production, correct to the last curl of cigaret smoke, was considered just about the best in town. Latterly patrons have come to realize that Mr. Belasco erects meticulously-perfect sets and shrewdly constructed plots; but that often they do not mean much. This one might have meant a lot five years ago. It is a study of a high-strung virgin much in love with her sister's husband. The resulting tale of how she smashed his home with hysteric lies is another portrait of the sex-starved woman. There have been many such portraits in life and letters of late. Hidden is another good one; affords an interesting evening in the theatre; and never achieves brilliance. Mr. Merivale gives a good, well-bred performance; Miss Merrill a good performance.
Clown
(See front cover.)
To Nikita Balieff came Morris Gest-in Paris.
"Will you," asked Morris Gest, "come to America?"
"Only a stupid man would take me to America," said Nikita Balieff. "I speak Russian, the only language nobody understands."
Said Morris Gest: "I am that stupid man."
That stupid man took M. Balieff to America. This week Balieff opens in Manhattan for his fifth U. S. season. For himself and for that stupid man he has made endless thousands of dollars; he has stamped his personality on the U. S. amusement mind as one of the few infallibles. He carries with him a Russian vaudeville show; upon which he comments to the audience between the acts in wretched English. This combination is called the Chauve-Souris.