THE CRIMISON BOOKSHELF

In presenting "Tiger Rose" as its offering this week, the St. James has undertaken to do a very difficult thing. Two groat factors in the success of this play in New York were that Lenore Uirich was cast to perfection as the French Canadian girl, and that David Belasco, in his scenery and scenic effects, had left nothing to the imagination. Take away the charm of Lenore Uirich's acting and the perfection of the stage settings, and you are hard put to it to find a substitute. If the theatre-goer is sensible enough not to expect at the St. James the exquisiteness of acting and of-scenery that one finds in a Belasco production, he will see that the Boston Stock Company is to be congratulated on its latest offering.

No one who had seen "The Nightcap" last week would have dreamed that Eveta Nudsen could take the part of Rose-Yet she did, and made it a highly colorful role. Although in the first act and in part of the second she detracted from the characterization of the French Canadian girl by making her too much of a vampire, she was excellent in the last act in the psychological working out of her part-especially in her reiterated "I cannot say good-bye!". The part of Hector Mac Collins, Factor of the Trading Post, was well taken by Ralph Remley, except where there was too noticable a combination of broad Scotch and pure English. Mark Kent as the doctor and Houston Richards as Pierre La Bey also deserve commendation.

The scenery was excellent, and the setting in the last act would have been a notable feature in the production if its filmsiness had not destroyed all the illusion And the dawn which Mr. Belasco made creep up imperceptibly, "came up like thunder", if not more so. In contrast with this hasty dawn, the thunderstorm in act two was realistic in its slow approach.

"Tiger Rose" is itself a typical melodrama, and Mr. Mack would have done better if he had revised his play in the places where the dialogue smacks too much of "The Tavern". In an intensely melodramatic moment in the last act, Bruce Norton ends his speech by uttering in a hoarse whisper "Damn him!", and the doctor hoarsely whispers back "My God!" Whereupon the audience bursts out laughing. Nevertheless melodrama is melodrama, and it would never do for the heroine to talk pidgin-English without a steady flow of "damn" and "hell". For the audience loves it.