New Plays

Accused. David Belasco's second production is a sound and courtly contribution to the season's more serious drama -- as far a cry from the tawdry Ladies of the Evening, which he did last year to fatten his purse, as can be easily imagined.

Possibly the fattening derived from the unlovely Ladies may indirectly have made Accused a reality. The new play is an expensive matter, employing as it does E. H. Sothern among its luxurious adjuncts, and decidedly a wild financial risk.*

The production is a risk because it is old fashioned. It is a leisurely piece with a purpose. Brieux, French author of the original, is inclined to propaganda (Damaged Goods and The Red Robe). Modern plays have hurried things up be hind the footlights. If they have a sermon to preach they take care to cast it in intensive words and action. Accused is largely argument, brilliant and searching argument to be sure, but developed in long paragraphs.

A murder has been done. A lawyer, famous chiefly because he has never defended a case in which he is not convinced of the innocence of his client, takes the case. The wretched, half crazy husband of a lovely woman has been killed. She is charged. Deep in the play the lawyer discovers that she is guilty, despite her insistence to the contrary. To complicate matters he is in love with her. His problem, then, is whether to go through with the case or by dropping it virtually insure her conviction by his very act. He carries on and wins her freedom.

E. H. Sothern, some 65 years old, his snow-white hair dyed black, gives a distinguished and a dominating performance. It is withal an elderly performance, reminiscent of an earlier generation in the Theatre, cut and gestured to measure; yet it has a quality of thoroughness and intelligence that makes it tower above the peculiarities of much of the present day acting. The play is a vocal treat, for Sothern's is probably the finest speaking-voice we know of in our Theatre.

Applesauce. Chicago approved this play mightily last season, and the earliest spectators were hopeful. They were sharply set down. It turned out to be an unskilful echo of The Show-Off, well played but cheap and dreary.

The young man who has most to do is a talker. He talks so much and so smoothly that he does not bother to work. The system suffices until he talks another man out of his fiancee and marries her himself. Then, in a heroic bit of utter implausibility in the last act, he talks himself into his rich uncle's favor. Apparently he is going to go through" life on the same principle. Not a bad idea, but is it practicable?

Allen Dinehart and Jessie Crom-mette make the evening possible with excellent performances--the former as the hero, and the latter as the bewildered mother of the girl who marries him.

A Holy Terror. John Golden is chiefly famous for clean plays--a fame in no small measure achieved by his own insistent advertising of the fact. Therefore the sharp knuckles of profanity protruding from the hairy fist of his first play this autumn caused comment. The profanity was not, it is true, intense. But remember the crooks in Turn to the Right and the apaches in Seoenfh Heaven. They never said damn or hell.

A Holy Terror is a melodrama of the coal mines. Its chief character is a lawless fellow whom eyerybody, including detectives hired to break a strike, was anxious to hang by the neck until he was dead. There is a murder charge against him toward the end to urge on the slightly lagging plot. There are revolvers, lovers and a ti'ial scene. Taken in one critical gulp they go down as only pretty good.

The Bridge of Distances. The

first play of the new International Playhouse flags badly after you have finished admiring the sets. It is a Chinese romance, decidedly Victorian in conception and development. Sentiment and joss sticks, torture and leering yellow faces are right enough in their place. That place comes dangerously near being the movies.

The International Playhouse promises to present drama of various lands--one of them America--in a native setting and spirit. One doubts very much if The Bridge of Distances is particularly Chinese. Which, after all, would have caused only scattering complaint if it had been interesting.

* Sarah Frances Frost ("Julia Marlowe") "a saucer-eyed, yellow-skinned girl of mel ancholic temperament," began acting in the late 80's, when "Poor Eddie" (E. H. Sothern) was playing Brooklyn in a farce he had written. "A nice lovable boy," said his tor." family, Sothern "but he made will his never name in make an ac Frohman melodramas, and was recognized as a romantic actor after his notable success in The Prisoner of Zenda. Miss Marlowe, after three yeara of intensive training with a certain Miss Dow, her stage aunt, began to take leading parts. In 1904 they announced that they would play together in Shakespeare and since that year have given innumerable stately, elo quent and capable performances in the U. S. and England.

("Julia Marlowe") "a "a saucer-eyed, yellow-skinned girl of l mel ancholic temperament," began acting in the late 80's, when "Poor Eddie" (E. (E. H. H.

Sothern) was playing Brooklyn in a farce he had written."A nice lovable boy," said his tor." family, Sothern "but he made will his never e name in make an ac Frohman melodramas, and was recognized as a romantic actor after his notable success in The Prisoner of Zenda. Miss Marlowe, after three yeara of of intensive training with a certain Miss Dow her stage aunt began to take leading parts.

In 1904 they announced that they would play together in Shakespeare and since that year have given innumerable , stately, elo quent and capable performances in the U.. S. and England..