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a stage manager and a supporter of th
best that the contemporary theatre yields.
Hauptmann’s drama is not unknown
here. It was almost new and had just
achieved fame for its author in Berlin,
when a version by C. H. Meltzer was per¬
formed—and not very adequately per¬
formed—at the Fifth Avenue Theatre
about sixteen years ago. Then it was
dismissed almost without a hearing and
the New York public, which has always
remained indifferent to Hauptmann's
genius, except in the case of The Sunken
Bell,“ had no further opportunities to
know the play, although it has occasionally
been performed in other cities.
It is different from Hauptmann’s other
drama in that it is purely poetie, without
message or symbolism of any kind, rely¬
ing for its effect wholly on the study of
the suffering child who, taken from the
pond in which she had sought to drown
herself, sees in her delirium the figures
of those she has loved and those she has
been taught by the sisters to revere and
worship.
Amid the quarrelling mendicants of this
village poorhouse in the Silesian Moun¬
tains, those who had befriended her be¬
come confused in her minc with the
tigures of her religion. There are angels
as well as the spirit of her dead mother,
while the schoolmaster, who has been
kindest of them all to her, assume
mind the likeness of the one she
taught to believe would receive
kingdom when all the earthlv 8
caused by her brutal stepfather
an end.
Vhile the preparations for her
funeral are being made the child'’s vision
is enacted.
There is gentle and touching poetry
in every incident of the play. and its
naive pathos colors every episode in the
simple action. That such beauties as
Hannele“ offers are not for all markets
#mnust be obvious from the slightest knowi¬
un
edge of its subject.
that nia
ersons would find
ven in Mrs. Fiske
eftfew
eria
hild sh
er
eli
ther 1
ave h
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seems alv
ble to
ussociates.
The uncom
difficulties of the visions
managed. The English versic
Mary J. Safford and Percy Mack
Hannele“
glittering contrast
came in The Green Cockatoo, Arthur
Schnitzler's one act play of life in Paris
on the eve of the French Revolution.
It was translated into verv stilted and
unnatural English by Philip Littel and
George Rublee, but that could not rob
the text of the characteristic andacity
and recklessness of. its period. One of
the actors in a cabaret to amuse the
aristocrats who gather there to try
believe that they are real eriminals and
not hired pretenders learns that his
wife is unfaithful and kills the man he
had just claimed—as a part of his even¬
ung's duties to his employer—to have
murdered in his wife’s dressing room
at the Porte St. Martin Theatre.
The climax of this episode was indeed
thrilling. There might advantageously
have been more distinctness in the per¬
formance and there was certainly a plen¬
tiful lack of elegance in all the actors
texcepting Edward Mackay and. Holbrook
Blinn, who played the jealous actor with
real power and distinction. Olive John
was a lovely Merreilleuse with all the#
artificiality and pose of the period, while
the acting was generally competent and
the accessories pieturesque.
But The Green Cockatoo' was no
such credit to the theatrie skill of Mrs.
liske, who did not take part in it, as
Hauptmann’s play which followed.