"MY MARYLAND" PASSES BY WITH GOOD TUNES

"My Maryland" falls disappointingly short of the expectations raised by reports from New York. This failure is possibly due to the favorite theatrical trick of sending a different cast to Boston or else the reports were fictitious. At any rate there is nothing to commend the show except an average good musical score containing two really excellent turns, "Your Land, my Land" and "The Same Silver Moon."

The story is fabricated around the fabulous adventures of Barbara Frietchie, who falls in love with Captain Trumbull, a "damn Yankee." For the purposes of the plot Barbara is transformed from the elderly dame of "shoot if you must this old gray head" fame to a winsome flaxen-haired flower of the South. Needless to say, her father opposes the marriage, sah, in which opinion he is supported by all the lads and lassies of the town who vilify Barbara as traitor, overlooking the fact that among their number are many able bodies young fellows who spend their time lounging around town instead of joining the Confederate forces.

The Climax of the play occurs when Barbara stands in the balcony outside the room of her wounded lover, clutching the Stars and Stripes to her breast. She is saved from the indignant mob by "Stonewall" Jackson, who marches in from Hagarstown by an exactly opposite direction to that in which the Union troops left for the same place. Amid fanfares of music, an endless line of soldiers, dressed in queer parodies of the Confederate uniform, passes under the balcony. If you are near enough to the front, you can quite plainly hear them racing around back stage to join the column again.

The very fact that the reviewer noticed these inconsistencies, some of which are to be expected in an historical operetta, is in itself a criticism of the show, for the spirit of the piece is not put across and the spectator becomes irritatingly aware of the flaws.