Evening Star Newspaper, May 7, 1929, Page 12

FORD LAUDS WORK AT WILLIAMSBURG Restoration Project Is Great- st of Kind in America, Says Motor Magnate. By the Associated Press. WILLIAMSBURG, Va., Henry Ford thinks the restoration of ‘Williamsburg, Colonial capital of Vir-| ginia, the greatest project of its kind | May 7. I don't think there | 1s anything in America to beat it,” the | automobile manufacturer said on a visit | here yesterday. | Mr. Ford, accompanied by Mrs. Ford and a small party of frient large part of the day in viewing the restoration work in the city which John D. Rockefeller, jr., is doing at a cost of several million dollars. ‘ISDO visited Yorktown. Bruton Parish Church and local repre. sentative for Mr. “It is wonderful. ds, spent a | The party | rector of | ente The Wild Duck, ntertaining theater,” is not an easy thing to act convincingly. What is es- sentially necessary is to discriminate between the values of righteous, if mis- guided, idealism embodied in the main roles, and the deeply tragic effects of this misguidance. This, in the review- o right failed to do. The work was played broadly, quite broadly enough to win the audience’s laughter, but in the suc- cessive somber climaxes the piece rang false, lacking sensitiveness. Miss Yurka, playing the stolid, prac- tical Kina, offered her victimization in the guise of listless, slow-witted resig- nation, culminating in a strident re- sentment, more the rebellion of an Irish mald, in character and accent, than that of the sorely beset woman that she was. The role of Hialmar Ekdal, demanding a _shading between sanctimonious self- pity and a desperate sense of wrong, did not find it in the interpretation of | Dallas Anderson. Called upon, accord- ing to the most understanding rendi- tion of his part, to display the fanatical outburst of his whole diseased idealism, throwing chairs ab-ut. This feeble de. vice of throwing chairs must be classi in the role; this reviewer recalls a per- formance of “The Wild Duck” by the company of Lugne-Poe in Paris last Summer, when the same juvenile dis- play was resorted to. Some one could make himself more effective, it would seem, by falling to throw a chair at the crucial moment. » as much as it repre- | sents the author in an approximation | opinion, 1s what the company last | he merely succeeded in ranting and| tained the Ford party at a luncheon at the restoration headquarters. Mr. and Mrs. T. Mott Shaw of the firm of architects superintending the restora- tion also were guests at the luncheon. Mr. Ford, who has been interested in the preservation of histaric American buildings himself, appeared much in. terested in the eighteenth century ap- pearance that Willlamsburg now is tak- ing on as the restoratian progresses. Aside from his brief comment to new: ni di P Cecil Clovelly, playing Gregers Werle, the inspiration of Ekdal’s cruelty toward his wife and daughter, missed th the cun ing and pious delusion the character- lznt:m l;;lqut{zs, plreuaun‘ uhis idealist as an almost aj ic 1 , without true !ee:r?ge e Bette Davis, assuming the minor but ifficult role of the martyred Hedwig, layed by Nazimova in Arthur Hopkins' presentation of “The Wild Duck” in New York in 1918, seemed to appeal to the audience with her studied insouci- ance. So also did John Daly Murphy, laying Lieut. Ekdal. doddering bur- esqued old 1elic of once mighty days. Relling, cominon-sense spokesman of the piece, was offered effectively by Frank Monroe. Others playing were Edward Fielding as Werle, Claire Townsend as Mrs. Sor- by, Walter Speakman as Molvik, Robert Craig as Petterson, Bernard Thornton, Richard Skinner and John Clarke as the three chamberlains. In the elements of quip and exag- gerated piosity, the play may be said to have registered well last night. The satire, if broadly done, was well done theatrically. . Sharp sketches of what we now regard as Shavian wit thrust through the ‘gloomy pattern, Ibsen in a mood he displayed in no other work. The tempo of the performance was well calculated; it did not lack speed and good development in its major moods. But sensitive 1t was not. POLI'S—“And So to Bed.” The philandering philosophy, or the philosophic philandering of the late Samuel Pepys, who made himself im- mortal by actually keeping a diary in- stead of planning to keep one, is spread before us again this week at Poli's Theater, and those who have not seen this production of Fagan's comedy, with the gifted Eugenie Leontovich as Mrs. Pepys, must not allow the opportunity to pass. The admirable Pepys wrote his own comedy, so Mr. Fagan's chief task was to give it proper stage set- ting, adaptation and to use his own imagination merely to prolong it a few pages beyond the point where Mr. Pepys left off. This he did, as the world now knows, and with such suc- cess that it has delighted hundreds of audiences hundreds of times. But its freshness and its charm remain, as Pepys diary remains, to entertain a world that is the same old world of which Mr. Pepys so frankly and so understandingly wrote. ‘Walter Kingsford's Pepys is as fine a portrait of the original self-portrait as one could wish, and he makes the old fellow step from his pages to strut his rascality so attractively that one can see him only through the eyes of Mrs. Pepys, and she saw him, and h , clearly enough. Without Mrs. Pepys he might have been merely interesting. Eugenie Leontovich has made of Mrs. Pepys such a delightful and charming shrew of a wife that her husband takes on a glamour and a fascination the wretch never deserved. Her delinea- tion sparkles with rare humor and un- understanding of a most searching study into' the wiles and the ways of femininity. Boyd Davis is a convincing Charles II, who cared a lot more for his various rendezvous than what his colonists on the other side of the At- lantic were paying in taxes on tea, and if the ladies of his fancy were like the Mrs. Knight portrayed by Roberta Beat- ty, the king's lack of interest in the rights of his American subjects is not so hard to understand. ‘The music, the costumes and the stage settings are delightful. But the play has been here before and is so well known withal and so excellently done that it is only idle to sit writing of it, inasmuch as it is better to see it than read or write of it—and so, to bed. NATIONAL PLAYERS—“It's a Boy.” “It's a Boy,” a rollicking comedy, by ‘William Anthony McGuire, “went over” with a resounding bang at the National Theater last night, and its popularity is due in no small measure to tne familiarity of its theme. McGuire, who first announced him- self to the theater world with “Six-Cyi~ inder Love,” was challenged some years ago by a newspaper friend. %o write a popular comedy around some homeiy phase of American life. “It's a Boy" is the result. The title is self-ex- planatory. A feature of last night's performance was the introduction of Roger Pryor as the new leading man of the National Theater Players. Cast in the role of the proud father, who is going through the experience for the first time, he demonstrated capabilities which left no room for doubt as to his popularity with National followers during the Summer. Roger Pryor has made his way iato the limelight after no more than five years on the American stage. His last part was in “The Front Page,” whicn he left after the Chicago run to come to Washington. “It's a Boy” gets off to a slow sta but improves greatly toward the eud | of the first act. The story deals with | a young married couple in Carbondale, Pa. The husband (Roger Pryor). is o big man in Carbondale, but his wife | (Edith King). feels she needs all of New York in which to expand. As might be expected, the husband sells out his business, goes to New York and finds himself without a job, without ‘WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A STIFF NECK, BILL ? MY NECK IS SO STIFF | COULDNT SLEEP LAST NIGHT. 1 ALWAYS USE SLOAN'S LINIMENT. IT MAKES STIFF MECKS WELL. PUT SLOAN'S LINIMENT ON YOUR NECK. THE PAIN WILL GO AWAY ATONCE. GET money and in domestic difficulties at the end of the first year. He and the wife, however, straighten out their dif- ficulties and decide to begin all over again- there ends the story. ‘There is'nothing startling about it, no revelations, philosophical flights, or anything of that sort. It is just a homely little comedy which goes over because nearly every one can put a finger on some phase of it and feel that his or her life is being lived over again. Freddie Sherman gives one of his 1 best performances as Willlam O'Toole, | ways reliable and always good, close friend of the ambitious young |their presence felt—the first two in father. The ready "Fm between | COmedy. and the others in essential roles him and his flapper girl friend, played | °f Villainy. { | after-the-show by Lois Benson, provides much of the | leves> oaimedy of v Dikg: brought the news that Edward Arnold, Edith King, the wife Who recognizes | ¥ho has just finished a three months her mistakes in time to keep her mar- | Tun in “Conflict,” will rejoin the Na- riage off the rocks, maintains the same tional Players next week. His welcome high standards which she set in her | s assured. debut lest week in “Square Crooks.” Cuaries Hampden, Adelalde Hibbard, Robert Brister and Helen Wallace, ai- Minlature max ‘boxes ara being caxgied by “smart” dressers of Paris. It Is Worth $2 If presented on or Before Wednesday, May 8 At All PEOPLES DRUG STORES INCH LENGTHS TOMORROW LAST DAY THESE PEARLS WILL BE ON SALE This Coupon and $1 e, GET refund your money—you are to be the makes 1t possi judge. Ideal for gifts and bridge prizes YOURS TODAY. paper men, however, he granted no in- terviews. The Ford party arrived here Sunday afternoon, but his presence did not be- come known to newspaper men until yesterday. The automobile magnate, explaining to the manager of the local hotel that he desired a ‘quiet visit, spread his name on the hotel register as J. H. Jones of Washington, chang- ing it to Henry Ford yesterday. AMUSEMENTS BELASCO—"“The Wild Duck.” An inelastic performance of Ibsen's *“The Wild Duck,” lacking in dramatic fastidiousness, was offered last night at the Belasco Theater, with Blanche Yurka starred in the role of Gina, by the Actors’ Theater, Inc. This play of Ibsen's, written when he was 56, was conceived essentially as a sardonic comedy. It has been pointed out that the theme represented Ibsen in as nearly a “rollicking” mood as he ever came in his life. Yet from the wvery nature and technique of the play- wright himself, it is impossible to dis- sociate the work from the emotional and philosophic complication that im- bued all his plays; it is virtually the first play of his in which symbolism assumed a major significance. “The Wild Duck,” the second of a trilogy, actually presented Ibsen's “ghastly mockery” of some of his own earlier idealism. It was a literal turn- about in his dramatic attitude: in his fcsflmlsflc denunciation of truth-tell- ing here he is assailing what he had most passionately championed before. ‘The result might well be confusing in its mixture of satire and tragedy. With frequently obscurely placed emphasis upon the conflicting satiric and tragic values of its dial d_declamation, All In Intestinal poisons are sapping your energy, stealing your pep, making you i1l. 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