Evening Star Newspaper, September 8, 1925, Page 9

SHUBERT BELASCO—yStill Waters.” Augustus Thomas has picked Ameri- ca’s most controversial subject for his new comedy. “Still Waters,” which opened last night at the Shu- bert. Belasco Theater. To those who do “not believe in prohibition the Thomas play will be a kind of literary casis. To those who believe that the chance of the human race lies in en- forcement of the dry laws it will be anathema. To those who belleve in prohibition—for others—and who vote for it, but do not practice it, the play may bring qualms of consclence, if they have such & thing about them. Mr. Thomas has dropped this alco- holic bomb on the National Capital. In the mind of the straightlaced pro hibitionist doubtless it will prove a * a shameful thing that should | n from the stage. But what of the hosts of men and women who still have their gin and cocktails, their high balls and toddies? For them the play will stand after all on its ability to entertain, to interest and to thrill. Its author has been called the dean of mittee rooms and who is engaged to the Senator himself; a fanatical re- ormer whose wife has a weakness for --:0hol, and the necessary complement of_secretaries. The play abounds in clever lines. An innovation is a comparison made | between the old version of the Bible, |in which “wine” is mentioned, with the Anti-Saloon League version of the Scriptures, which have been revised to read “raisin cakes" instead of wine. Mr. Willlam Elliott, who “presents” the play, has surrounded Mr. Thomas with a capable cast, in which Edward Emery as the canon, Herbert Watrous as the bootlegger, David Tearle as the Britisher and Mona Kingsley as the wise woman about the Capitol par- | ticularly shine. NATIONAL—"The Vortex.” A precise first act, a slightly ac- |celerated second and u whirlwind third, each revealing & remarkable mastery of stage technique that lifts a not unusual theme to the status of cellent play—this is “The Vor- THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. circumstance' scores another Vvictory.| expose of his mother's character is t, a conversational af- | made emphatically apparent in a vio- and thejlent tantrum in which she orders The mother, craving youth, | Bunty and Tom from her home, while attempts to find it in the fragile| Nicky sits at the plano pounding a adoration of a lad the age of her son. | thunderous dirge to the death of his Vortex™” came straight from London, where it enjoyed a long run, and where it won Mr. Coward, at the age of 25, the acclalm of critics as ‘“the hope of the British stage.” “The Vértex,” as its name indicates, is_melodramatic psychology—a thesis splendidly developed to prove that the machinery of redemption, dynamited by circumstance, is capable of far- reaching achlievement. Mr. Coward’s play creates two char- acters; the other eight are the crea- tions of circumstance, as one finds circumstance in the upper erotic | crust of British soclety, or any other soclety. The two creatlons of the playright— and he plays the male oné—are cravea weaklings. The one, the son, Nicky Kancaster, a neurasthenic musician, with a mighty inferiority complex and a_monstrous self-pity, born a loser and always an ungracious one, gives Mr. Coward an opportuniyt to prove himself an actor of talent as well as a playwright. The other is the mother, a vain woman, starkly afraid of the inevi- table march of age, fighting against it |with a pitiable stupidity, a weapon {that is inadequate, but whose very inadequateness brings her finally to an approximation of the psycholo- The firet fair, establishes mother. Nicky C. Her Intellectual friend's lectures onlast illusion. the erstwhile laugh-provoker, "Be: your age,” fafl to pierce the armor of her stupid emotionalism. Nicky comes home from a year in Paris, a year in which he has learned a little music, discovers what he calls love for Bunty Mainwaring and finds the technique of narcotic dabbling. Bunty i1s somewhat of an intellec- tual. Through her eyes and his own Nicky begins to see through the mi- rage with which he has clothed his mother. Illusions begin to crash. At a house party in the Lancaster country home, the scene of the second act, the rumble of the approaching debacle of two weaklings is heard. Tom, the Galahad to the mother's dying youth, finds that Bunty Is an old unquenched flame. ‘Together they tear away the glamour that has drawn them respectively to the mother and Nicky. Bunty breaks the news to Nicky that their engagement is off. Tom, less delicately, achleves the same end as far as the mother is concerned by ‘The third act is cyclonic. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, His 1l- Ile——ala] ———|o|———=|a| —=] 1925. lusions dead, Nicky comes to his mother’s room to force her to join him in putting life on an intelligent rather than an emotional basis. e forcea from her the truth about Tom and drives her to confessions of indis- cretions with other youths. Melo- dramatically he annihilates the tawdry* You Can Save —appreciably on Funeral Flowers by ordering f “Cash & Carry.” Wreaths | —SPRAYS and other high- |} } ly effective Floral Tributes o} DELIVERED— $2.50 . || stwidity of their lives. Finally, his own confession of the use of dope proves the weapon that breaks his mother’s selfishness, shows her, after all, with & bit of mother instinct, and P they agree, teariully, to fight for a different kind of lite. Basil Dean produces “The Vortex" with Mr. Coward. _An_excellent crowd ~ (Continued on Thirteenth Page.) - KAPLOVIT Zzer INCORPORATED rzi NINTH STREET NORTHWEST FOR THIS WEEK 20,000 DOLLAR DRESS SALE NEW FALL PARIS AFTERNOON GOWNS FORTY-FIVE DOLLAR BEAUTIFUL GOWNJS AT $50.00 FIETY-FIVE DOLLAR BEAUTIFUL GOWNS AT $42.50 EIGHTY-FIVE DOLLAR BEAUTIFUL GOWNJS AT $s5.00 x,” the threeuct play Noel |gist's norm. Lillian Braithwaite Tas wiition v successtul plays. In|Coward that opened the National's|plays the mother. Two emotionalists “Still Waters,” howe: Mr. Thomas |regular Fall season last night. “The clash with hard circumstance, and Cash&CarryFlowerStoresa we should say propagandist. The play 7 7] e el ore G J, » Eahonaisy b TaonlN Funeral Flowers Delivered Free—Nominal Charge on Other Orders [ and the lesson is too obvious. Suc ' 807 14th 804 17th 2467 18th 1209 Wis. Ave. | | Cunningham € ¢ ¢ cessful lessons from the stage are Phone Fr. 5442 Phone Fr. 10301 Tel. Col. 9997 Phone West 1702 316 7th St. N.W. ° being caught kissing Bunty. The mother's scceam of stricken vanity draws Nicky to the room, where the American playwrights. Certainly he WE SOLICIT CRITICAL COMPARISON SPECIALIZING IN FASHIONS DE LUXE EXCLUSIVELY FOR MADAME AND MADEMOISELLE STORE HOURS s A.M TO 6 P. M. more subt e——jojc———o|c———|o]e——[aj—\ It is dificult to discuss even. stage —_—_,S (4 G -STREET BETWEEN 1lth & 12¢th merits or demerits of prohibition. But Mr. Thomas in his play seeks to es. tablish that all prohibitionists and re- formers are hypocrites or bigots, or worse. Every character in the play who stands on the side of prohibition | turns out to be a crook or a hypocrite, while the “antis” are “all d fel- en Canon Kewb: , the who enters the realm of politics for the sake of reform, is shown | to be a plotter ready to encourage crime in order to win under the old doctrine that the end justifies the means. So anxious is he to point a moral to adorn a tale, Mr. Thomas has plled argument on argument ageinst prohibition until the ramifications of the play become a trifle tedious and | difficult to follow. If the play is to succeed as an interesting comedy that holds the interest, the machinery must be more simply geared. There are too many wheels within wheels. The playwright has come to Wash- | ington, the seat of the National Gov- ernment, for his scene and local color—to the very Capitol Building itself, where a bootlegger is plying his blithesome trade in the office of and with a Senator of the United States as the purchasing end. And Mr. Thomas plays the Senator himself, a return to the stage by the playwright after 25 years. He plays the part with judg- ment and nice sense of values. A Senator is no rara avis in Wash- ington. It is well understood that some of them drink aplenty and vote dry. But the Senator hero of the new play—Senator Clayborn—has seen the error of his wi He proposes to vote as he drinks hereafter, and that brings down upon his head the vials of wrath. The plot is somewhat com- plicated by the villainy of another Sen- | ator and member of the House who | seek to Kill off Senator Clayborn by the “dry” vote, because they are rali- road owners and oppose the St. Law- | rence Canal project favored by Sen- ator Clayborn. This bit of villainy, which is finally exposed, really has nothing whatever to do with the ques. ||| tion of prohibition in this country. It | is dragged in in order to make it pos- sible for Senator Clayborn to win his fight for renomination. Mr. Thomas has included In his com- | ||| edy, in addition to the bootlegger and | the politicians, a naval attache of the British embassy, who flies a seaplane and is in love with the Senator’s daughter; a clever woman who know: her way ‘about the Capitol and com Wednesday . . . 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