THE THEATRE
THE restoration of mid-winter's title to these pages is a concession to the calendar. By August "the theatre" is again in action; and in effect to call the summer shows by any other name would be flying in the face of fact. For most people when they go to the theatre ("conceived," as a recent writer on the subject has informed us, "in godhead, born beside altars, slain in the brothel and born again in the soul of man") think of their excursion as pure entertainment. The reason for it, quite apart from the natural lust of man to be amused, is that pure entertainment has been steadily growing more entertaining while the theatre, serious style, has stead- ily grown more serious.
All of this has to be mere prologue to Mr Ziegfeld's offering: "the sixteenth of the series of / the national institution glorifying the American girl / Ziegfeld Follies. Elsewhere in town flourish successors to Shuffle Along: Strut Miss Lizzie and the Plantation notable among them. Mr Ziegfeld concedes much to the rage for blackness, persuading the sombre-brooding, impassioned Gilda Grey to stop worrying over the chances of complete disarticulation and to strut freely and magnificently in a more than nigger blackness picked out by radiolite. Messrs Buck and Stamper have not equalled the ecstatic energy and excitement of Mr Shelton Brooks' Darktown Strutters' Ball, a piece which Mr Brooks' presence at the Plantation ought to bring into long-deserved repute. The wild cries Mr Ned Wayburn has not attempted, the melodic curve of his production is an interesting undulation, the gesture is gentle and smooth. But what smoothness!
Will Rogers grows more and more simple, more and more subtle, each year, and in this production simply walks away with virtually all the honours not taken by Miss Grey. One has to report the particular humour he was in at a specific performance, and the quality of the jests on that day: both excellent; he was in significant form. His permanent piece is that written by Ring Lardner, The Bull Pen, in which he does virtually nothing but sit still and shift his chew of tobacco, and does it beautifully. The advantages of being Will Rogers have been fairly well exposed in recent years, never
