MAYOR CURLEY WENT TO "SEVENTH HEAVEN"

Widely heralded as a "clean play",--perhaps too widely for its own good--"Seventh Heaven" came to the Tremont Monday night, and before two distinguished guests-of-honor, Lieutenant-Governor Allen and Mayor Curley, well-known apostles of a clean drama, achieved a very considerable triumph. Producer John Golden was there, and after his leading lady, Ann Forrest, had taken several curtain calls at the close of the second act, consented to speak. He outlined his views on stage purity, complimented Boston for its support of the cause, and ended by calling on Mayor Curley to rise and bow from his seat in the orchestra. The mayor took advantage of the opportunity to say a few words.

"Seventh Heaven" is a play of Parisian low life, the love story of a sewer rat and a girl "who has not been good." Its theme is the philosophic observation of Boul' ("short for boulevard") the good-hearted and light-fingered cabman: "We sinners make the best saints." From the depths of sewer and street in the first act, its hero and heroine rise to Heaven in the second and third, their paradise the dingy seventh floor room of a tenement.

There is something about poverty, at least about poverty as one sees it on the stage, which intensifies personality, throwing into sharp relief often dangerously year to exaggerating each peculiarity of character. This, of course, is meat and drink to the playwright. In "Seventh Heaven", Austin Strong took a handful of such individuals and into the story of their lives injected humor, tradedy, more than a little pathos, a bit of melodrama, and out of it all produced an immensely effective comedy.

Louis D'Arclay gave a spirited performance as Chico, the sewer rat who never let life get the better of him. When he prayed to "le bon Dieu" for his heart's desire, a job on "the hose", a wife with yellow hair, and a ride in a taxi-cab, and even payed good money to burn candles to his favorite saint, nothing happened; and so Chico forthwith became an atheist and went around proclaiming that God owed him fifteen francs. And it must have done some good for eventually God paid the debt. Tormented by a wicked, dope-ridden sister Diane for a time contemplated suicide, but took heart from Chico's robust philosophy of life, and eventually rose to great heights of courage and renunciation. Ann Forrest avoided overdoing this difficult role, and gave the outstanding performance of the evening, and one of the best of this season. W. H. Post was the merry priest, guardian angel of the denizens of the sewer, and John W. Ransone, the lusty Boul'. Grace Menken made so effective a harpy that the audience hissed her.

"Seventh Heaven" marks no mile post in the history of the American theatre, but it is good entertainment, and promises to enjoy a considerable run in this city