In an ode to hard liquor Mr Don Marquis has interpolated lyric passages of extraordinary power. The ode being a play, The Old Soak, the lyrics are comic, and the best of them, concerning the death of the parrot, is simple, passionate, and sensuous. Two characters and a good caricature (the old soak, the bootlegger, and the maid) are a fair contribution to one play, and it is only unfortunate that just one of them is relevant to the plot. They are done with loving-kindness and with Mr Marquis' exceeding sense of personality. The play is fresh and pure and sweet of breath; it has, like all simplicity, its moments of dulness, but little of its mechanism is superimposed and it uses up all of its available material. I mean that the implication of the pious banker in the business of bootlegging is implicit in the action and that the turns and tricks come chiefly out of the whisky bottle. The acting, too, seemed so inspired, for the best work was done by Harry Beresford, Robert E. O'Connor, and Eva Williams, in the characters noted above. All of the staleness of plot and weakness of characterization and dulness of lines was given to the others, and they seemed to eat it up.
An error of judgement brings Mr Tinney to New York in the worst musical comedy which might be one of the best revues in years. He does a definite piece of impersonation as an old coachman, and is as funny as ever, but there is no reason in the world why he should appear only in the intervals of an exceptionally sickly and banal love-story. Perhaps Mr Tinney never saw the show until the first night.
Quite a number of the early openings have already gone to the storehouse. One anticipates a lively season.
