The Crimson Playgoer

Get ye a glow on, my Harvard brethren, and go ye in bands of six or more to the Copley Theatre. There ye are allowed, nay, even urged, to exert your exuberance in any manner short of breaking chairs. Fit buit for your witty sallies is that touching dra-a-ama, resurrected in all its pristine glory from P.T. Barnum's American Museum, vintage 18 34,--I speak of "The Drunkard, or the Fallen Saved". Ye may hiss the deep-dyed villian, Lawyer Cribbs; ye may shout "Look out," or "Youse is a viper," as he prepares to enmesh in his toils that jewel, that unfortunate yet loyal wife of the intemperate Edward Middleton. Ye may join lustily in the song "Fare thee well, for I must leave you" and others.

Nor does the merriment stop with the performance; rather, in accredited dialect--You ain't seen nuthin' yet. Invited by the charming ushers in evening gowns, you join the cast on the stage for a preliminary cup of coffee and a sandwich gratis. Follows then community singing and dancing, all very folksy, and you can take home anything that strikes your fancy. You will find Belle Livingston just a bit elderly for your tastes, but she is very nice about bringing the young people together. Restrictions are of a naive nature, to quote the program, "Kindly refrain from cracking peanuts during the performance", and "Citizens found carrying perishable merchandise will be stopped at the door". The same program carries the names of the ushering staff.

But if you are sober, and unfortunately someone sometime must be, "The Drunkard", as here produced, can be an annoying bore. In recreating the music hall atmosphere, the Copley seems to have scoured the streets for all those people whose stock-in-trade is "You said it, sport", and placed them in the balcony. The audience thus takes the cast by storm, its superb banalities so drowning speech on the stage as to make the play seem a pantomine. Too bad, for I recall in a previous performance that the lines of the play were pearls of wit, and trite not at all. This time I was able to rescue just a few from the crowd, particularly this throaty declamation, with gestures, "You a man? God made a blunder." The rough simplicity of the ballad, "She is more to be pitied than censured (for a man was the cause of it all)", likewise struck my fancy.

Despite Belle Livingston, the antiquarian New York hostess of the speakeasy era who copiously advertises her concurrent appearances at a neighboring restaurant--despite Leo Beers and his country singing--the ten or a dozen red- gingham-covered tables which have replaced the first rows in the orchestra--"The Drunkard" is not given the opportunity of becoming the honestly entertaining revival which its well-executed flyer-program clarions.