4.9. Anatol
Zykle
box 8/7
ter
a
1911.
LAST NIGHTS PREMIERE.
LITTLE THEATRE : Five Scenes in the
Life of Anatol.
By Arthur Schnitzler.
I.—Anatol tries to extort a confession of infidelity
from his sweetheart through the means of
hypnotism, but fails from want of courage.
Anatol meets a former lady friend shopping
on Christmas Eve. Charmed and wistful by
the description of his present little girl, she her
self buys flowers and sends them to the girl
in question.
III. Anatol buries his past by burning relics.
One, labelled Episode, is being discussed
with his boon companion Max, when in comes
the heroine of the relic, who has no recollection
of the tropy.
IV. Anatol and Max avait a lady in a private
room at a restaurant. Anatol is about to break
with her when she forestalis him and gives him
his congé.
Anatole wedding morning, finds him in a
dilemma. Max comes to felch him to the cere¬
mony and finds that there is a lady in the next
room, a souvenir of the fancy dress ball at the
Opera the evening before. Consternation on the
part of the girl when she hears Anatol is to
be married. Consolation offered by Max.
These piquant, witty, unequal characteristic
little episodes of life in the Kaiserstadt on the
Danube have for years been popular on the Conti¬
nent. In spite of Greenwich time, we are just a
decade or two behind the times such is the perspi¬
cacity and the information of insular managers !
These little episodes, which Mr. Granville
Barker has transplanted to the Thames without
much prejudice to the Blue Danube, are not the
plain fare for everybody's palate. Nor would
recommend them to the immature and those un¬
initiated in the so-called "mysteries of life. They
are for men and women of the world, who feel
that every country has its ways as well as its
code of morals; they are for people of a wide
horizon for those who view the spring of life
with the benevolent eye of experience and not
through the spectacles of Mr. Pecksniff.
Anatol is the typical Viennes of the jeunesse
more or less dorée. He is light of life, light of
love; he is what women call "rather a dear
and exceedingly proud of his prowas
well as of his irresistibility. Max, his chum, is
more the reasoner in the matter of fact
Teutonic way. To him Anatol is as good as a
play. He is the tortoise, Max is the hare; thus
Anatol skims the surface of things and men, and
Max probes them with Xrays. At heart they are
both not the rakes they seem, but good fellows,
who will, in after life, prove fountains of wisdom
and practise the divine tout comprendre. As for
their womankind who temporarily fill their lives,
they are more or less of the same kind butterflies
who, until age and necessity bid them stop, wor¬
ship the great apology of the springtime of life.
These plays want to be acted as they are written,
with fine penetration, with facile grace. The note
must never be forced; it should run like the strain
of a Viennese waltz.
In some respects the performance at the Little
Theatre had all these qualities. Mr. Barker is, per¬
haps, not the Anatol as the Prater know him, but
he proves himself a versatile comedian, capable of
occasional tours de force. M. Niger Playfairs
Max is a genunctus, humorus, good natured,
oberin fact, the very man as we read him. In
the first episode Miss Gertrude Robins was quietly
convincing; in the farewell super Miss McCarthy
charmed by her naturalness and abandon; in the
episode Miss Minto was the circus gamine she
should be; and in the very naughty wedding
morning" Mies Crawford marked immense pro¬
gress. Frankly, of all the ladies she conveyed most
intensely that unspeakable something, which we
associate with Wienerin.
All the piecelets roused much laughter, but I
fear that the last named will prove rather too
exotic for our audiences. It is probably the one
which anon will be interchanged with another
Anatol, in which we are promised the rentrée of
that clever comedienne, Miss Aimée de Burgh.
But as it stands, the quintuple programme is as
bright as a string of pears.
J. T. GREIN.
Zykle
box 8/7
ter
a
1911.
LAST NIGHTS PREMIERE.
LITTLE THEATRE : Five Scenes in the
Life of Anatol.
By Arthur Schnitzler.
I.—Anatol tries to extort a confession of infidelity
from his sweetheart through the means of
hypnotism, but fails from want of courage.
Anatol meets a former lady friend shopping
on Christmas Eve. Charmed and wistful by
the description of his present little girl, she her
self buys flowers and sends them to the girl
in question.
III. Anatol buries his past by burning relics.
One, labelled Episode, is being discussed
with his boon companion Max, when in comes
the heroine of the relic, who has no recollection
of the tropy.
IV. Anatol and Max avait a lady in a private
room at a restaurant. Anatol is about to break
with her when she forestalis him and gives him
his congé.
Anatole wedding morning, finds him in a
dilemma. Max comes to felch him to the cere¬
mony and finds that there is a lady in the next
room, a souvenir of the fancy dress ball at the
Opera the evening before. Consternation on the
part of the girl when she hears Anatol is to
be married. Consolation offered by Max.
These piquant, witty, unequal characteristic
little episodes of life in the Kaiserstadt on the
Danube have for years been popular on the Conti¬
nent. In spite of Greenwich time, we are just a
decade or two behind the times such is the perspi¬
cacity and the information of insular managers !
These little episodes, which Mr. Granville
Barker has transplanted to the Thames without
much prejudice to the Blue Danube, are not the
plain fare for everybody's palate. Nor would
recommend them to the immature and those un¬
initiated in the so-called "mysteries of life. They
are for men and women of the world, who feel
that every country has its ways as well as its
code of morals; they are for people of a wide
horizon for those who view the spring of life
with the benevolent eye of experience and not
through the spectacles of Mr. Pecksniff.
Anatol is the typical Viennes of the jeunesse
more or less dorée. He is light of life, light of
love; he is what women call "rather a dear
and exceedingly proud of his prowas
well as of his irresistibility. Max, his chum, is
more the reasoner in the matter of fact
Teutonic way. To him Anatol is as good as a
play. He is the tortoise, Max is the hare; thus
Anatol skims the surface of things and men, and
Max probes them with Xrays. At heart they are
both not the rakes they seem, but good fellows,
who will, in after life, prove fountains of wisdom
and practise the divine tout comprendre. As for
their womankind who temporarily fill their lives,
they are more or less of the same kind butterflies
who, until age and necessity bid them stop, wor¬
ship the great apology of the springtime of life.
These plays want to be acted as they are written,
with fine penetration, with facile grace. The note
must never be forced; it should run like the strain
of a Viennese waltz.
In some respects the performance at the Little
Theatre had all these qualities. Mr. Barker is, per¬
haps, not the Anatol as the Prater know him, but
he proves himself a versatile comedian, capable of
occasional tours de force. M. Niger Playfairs
Max is a genunctus, humorus, good natured,
oberin fact, the very man as we read him. In
the first episode Miss Gertrude Robins was quietly
convincing; in the farewell super Miss McCarthy
charmed by her naturalness and abandon; in the
episode Miss Minto was the circus gamine she
should be; and in the very naughty wedding
morning" Mies Crawford marked immense pro¬
gress. Frankly, of all the ladies she conveyed most
intensely that unspeakable something, which we
associate with Wienerin.
All the piecelets roused much laughter, but I
fear that the last named will prove rather too
exotic for our audiences. It is probably the one
which anon will be interchanged with another
Anatol, in which we are promised the rentrée of
that clever comedienne, Miss Aimée de Burgh.
But as it stands, the quintuple programme is as
bright as a string of pears.
J. T. GREIN.