That Ferguson Family. Christmas week in the theatre is a time of plenty but not always one of jollity. While the holly wreaths hang high, the gloomiest producers, among them Gustav Blum, creep out with their dire presentations. Blum's latest bit of hardware was not so dull as festive critics found it, though not so good as its author, Howard Chenery, tried to make it.
At the head of the Ferguson family was Mom Ferguson, a dowdy, cynical scold. Impelled by her stupid and melancholy faultfinding, her two daughters and son rebelled by getting married. Before they did so, one of the daughters stole dresses in the store where she worked and the son made love to a rural chit over his prize-winning plans for a bridge.
Alan Ward and Thelma Paige played well in this homely love scene and all the other actors, especially Jean Adair as Mom, did their perhaps too level best to make the rustic trifle seem intense.
Falstaff is a comedy, compounded by James Plaisted Webber from Shakespearian scenes and others from his own imagination. In it there are many snatches of tune, lyrics by Brian Hooker, Falstaff's famed expose of "honor" and a false ending in which Prince' Hal bows to Anne Page and promises an annuity to Falstaff. Charles Coburn, blown up to a mountainous size, puffs prodigiously as the lecherous old knight who is robbed in a forest and dumped into the Thames from a laundry basket.
The Red Robe. It is not customary, when the Shuberts produce a good operetta, for the public to howl so loudly with joy as when "Ziggy," the maestro and artist, produces a mediocre one. Thus The Three Musketeers, last spring, an elaborate musicale, provoked more ardent cheers than The Red Robe, last week, which was just as good.
Operettas, of course, are all absurd and The Red Robe, adapted from Stanley Weyman's novel, is no exception. Yet it made a good play 25 years ago, in which William Faversham starred, and now it makes a gay and gaudy minstrel show for Walter Woolf. In the story of Gil de Berault, who was sentenced to death for duelling and paroled by Cardinal Richelieu in time to achieve fortune and a beautiful partner for the final curtain, there is proper material for brocaded dresses, sword play, romantic songs and fustian foolery. All this has been contributed. Helen Gilliland, an English actress, sings when she drops her white glove and on other occasions. For dancing, there are girls very Chester Hale and hearty. Barry Lupino, British clown, is funny without being dirty.
Hello, Daddy! Ever since Betty Starbuck was seen partaking in the frivolities of the Garrick Gaieties, there have been those who regarded her as among the most pleasing of sarcastic heroines; yet she never received her due. She does not receive it now, in Hello Daddy!, though with Billy Taylor and Lew Fields, the publicized star of the show, she does all kinds of things that are engaging. Lew Fields produced the piece; his son, Herbert (Connecticut Yankee) Fields, wrote the book; his daughter, Dorothy (Blackbirds) Fields, wrote the lyrics.