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The Houseboat on the Styx. Thirty years ago, John Kendrick Bangs wrote stories about a yachting party near Hell. Producer Ned Jakobs thought that these stories deserve to be perpetuated on the stage, with song-&-dancing. That is the purpose of The Houseboat on the Styx, that and moneymaking. Adam, Barnum, Captain Kidd. Sherlock Holmes and Cleopatra; Mrs. Noah, Sappho, Charon, Josephine and Sir Walter Raleigh—all the Bangsian characters come on deck to sing somewhat Gilbertian songs and utter up-to-the-hour Times Squarese. Blanche Ring as Queen Elizabeth shouts, when someone offers her a drink: "Swine!" "No," is the answer, " 'sapplejack." Its first evening, The Houseboat on the Styx mounted at moments to hilarity. Its songs, while not entirely novel, were cheering.
One Way Street. Broadway is an interesting avenue because on its bright pavements each evening many thousands of mediocre human beings flock together, drawn by a picturesque, gregarious invitation. In degree no more clever or sinister than the main street of a village, it has lately been advertised more widely than ever before by columnists, playwrights and criminals. One Way Street celebrates the murder of a golden-haired drug-peddler, one of Broadway's ,least notable miscreants, by an alien rustic whose sister had learned to punch herself with dope.
Before the author of the murder is ascertained there are gruesome scenes of crime solution. Riff-raff from the pleasure caves, also a butler and a financier, are grilled by policemen. Not alone because of the alacrity with which the criminal's name is hit upon, the ceremonies of detection seem patterned upon the ways of the theatre rather than the ways of life. One Way Street is a melodramatic stereotype and its most exciting moment occurs when the audience sees, dangling brightly from- the end of a trunk, the shining hair of the murdered drug-girl.
Ruth Draper's Monologues are by now sufficiently famed not to need exposition. She appeared in Manhattan last week in a series of character sketches. With no more props than could be put in a pigeonhole, she managed to make herself into a series of totally different and exceedingly interesting people. She was a lady taking an Italian lesson; she was a Cockney girl on the Thames embankment; she was a Philadelphia matron at a children's party; she was a Polish actress, having scenes with her director; she was an English horsewoman, mouthing at her breakfast; she was a U. S. tourist in an Italian-church; she was a Dalmatian peasant girl, standing in the hallway of a U. S. hospital, asking about her husband who was hurt. Then she was Ruth Draper again, standing on the stage and bowing to the applause.
Seeing her bow was strange. After her chameleon magic, it was hard to believe that she was real at all, that her own personality existed outside of the many personalities which it is her ability to inhabit. Under the control of an illusion still, you felt that maybe this was another imitation, that Ruth Draper was really; someone else inside of this small, alert, bowing actress.