MELPOMENE MIRRORED

Broadway's producers, who in the crucial moment of selection are most swayed by the prospect of fat boxoffice returns, have of late staked their ultimate pennies on the play of the theatre. Of this description "Ballyhoo," "The Shannons of Broadway," "Burlesque," "The Wild Man of Borneo," "The Barker," and "Broadway" have been the most notable, the last-named two even leaving the secure delights of a Manhattan audience to brave with confident melodrama what is now known throughout the profession as the Boston titter.

It is a far cry from these more or less accurate pieces of theatrical realism, which picture the scenes beyond the wings in more truth than has hitherto been their portraiture, to the flood of circus movies which burst upon the movie-going public of two or three years ago. Almost impossible it is to believe that the cinema would ever see its ideas adopted by the stage, but that is precisely what has happened.

From the clown whose heart was breaking beneath his greasepaint, even though he capered and grimaced ever so gayly, from the sad fate of the little sawdust equestrienne, from the scores of tragedies of tarnished tinsel, the playwrights of today 'have traveled rather swiftly over a long road. They have left behind the doubtful humors of bathos, which are caught by only a minority of their listeners and even then in contradiction of the author's intention. From the mists of experiment may appear the author who can view life again as a stage, with perhaps some of the subtlety and detachment that has been given to a single and supremely great artist.