5. 1898--Week 11: March 14-19

 By 

Samuel L. Leiter

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre

Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

For an introduction to and explanation of this blog, as well as a list of contemporary Brooklyn theatres, click here.

Weeks 1-6 are covered on this blog's predecessor, STAGES IN BROOKLYN'S PAST, starting with weeks 1-2 here. 

Brooklyn theatregoers had only one show not previously seen there this week, but seven that had been there before, most only recently, if at other Brooklyn venues. Secret Service (now in its third week), Wedding Day, The Prisoner of Zenda, An Irish Gentleman, and The Cruiskeen Lawn were still fresh in playgoers’ memories; some older folk could still remember seeing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most produced play of the 19^th century, back in the 1850s. Those looking for something fresh had it in The French Maid, as light a diversion as its title suggests. 

As the following list reveals, all eight legit theatres offered something; so did the four nonlegits.

Columbia: The French Maid

Montauk: Secret Service (its third week)

Amphion: The Wedding Day

Grand Opera House: The Prisoner of Zenda

Bijou: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Park: The Cruiskeen Lawn

Gayety: An Irish Gentleman

The French Maid was then nearing its 350^th performance at Terry’s Theatre in London, and had recently finished a five-month run at New York’s Herald Square Theatre, where it had succeeded another Gallic-flavored musical called The Girl from Paris, seen on these shores earlier in the year, and to which it was favorably compared. Originating in England, with a libretto by Capt. Basil Hood and music by Walter Slaughter, it was revised by impresario and songwriter E.E. Rice to reflect American humor, and included new songs. It was booked for a two-week stay at the Columbia.

The Brooklyn Citizen described it like this:

Suzette, a French maid at the Hotel Anglais, Boulogne, has appointments to meet half a dozen admirers at a masked ball in the Casino Gardens; and three men disguise themselves as one another. There is a pair of twins, different in mental and physical characteristics—one a stalwart, fun-loving Jack tar, ashore on a frolic, and the other a timid, attenuated Cockney waiter. There are a British admiral, an East Indian general, a dashing naval lieutenant, and a Maharajah of Punkapore, who has received the honorary title of admiral. The real admiral is jealous of his portly wife, and a hotel keeper is jealous of his own wife. Each man mistakes the others’ wife for his own. A jealous gendarme muddles everything in general. And so complication is piled on complication. The bal masque introduces everybody picturesquely, and there is much singing and dancing.

There were several ballets, including “Frolique Français,” the “Bon Bon,” and the “Carnival Quadrille,” “in which the girls depict silken-hosed gallants, and upon reversing are shown as Quakeresses.” Brooklyn girl Olive Redpath, “dainty and piquant,” who had starred in The Girl from Paris, now was the French maid, with a large supporting cast including Eva Davenport as Lady Hawser, Yolande Wallace as Mme. Camembert, Charles A. Bigelow as the waiter, Hallen Mostyn as the sailor, and so on. Australian dance soloist Saharet was much noted. The Daily Times said she specialized in acrobatic dancing and high kicking in which respect she is said to outdo even the kangaroo of her native land.” American song interpolations included “It Was Twenty-Seven Bells by the Waterbury Watch,” “The Admiral,” Rice’s own “Rhapsodie Table d’Hôte.”

At the Montauk, William Gillette’s Secret Service continued to sold-out houses who thrilled to its fine construction, excellent use of pantomimic action and limited amount of dialogue, ensemble acting, and scenic realism. And the controversy caused by Capt. Thorne’s choice of the woman over patriotism continued to stir discussion. Brooklyn Life wrote: “For my part Captain ‘Thorne would have been more of a hero had he renounced the woman and been absolutely loyal to his cause, but I wager that nine out of ten theater-goers would not have it so.”

The so-called “Triple Alliance” in which comic opera stars Lillian Russell, Della Fox, and Jeff De Angelis joined for this season, visited Brooklyn’s Montauk in Stange and Edwards’s The Wedding Day in the fall of 1897. Now, after a very profitable tour, it was back again, now at the Amphion. The show, set during France’s Fronde uprising in 1649, offered many opportunities for scenic and costume lavishness, and was happily received, with kudos to its three stars,

Another returnee was Edward Rose’s popular romantic costume melodrama, The Prisoner of Zenda, adapted from Anthony Hope’s best seller, in a touring company, which had played at theatres from Pittsburg to San Francisco under Daniel Frohman’s management. The play had been seen earlier in the season at the high-priced Columbia, but was now at the popular-priced Grand Opera House. Its cast was led by actors less well known than those who toured the play under James K. Hackett or E.H. Sothern, but Harold Gould was quite satisfactory in the leading role, with Fanchon Campbell as the heroine.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, adapted from the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, seemed, of all American plays of the period, deathless. It now arrived at the Bijou in yet another road company version, although the Park Theatre Stock Company had revived it locally earlier in the season. The Eagle noted:

There was a time when “Uncle Tom” was supposed to be played out for any more ambitious Thespians than those who travel with tents or content themselves with unrolling a few sheets of canvas in rural town halls. But the death of Mrs. Stowe last year revived interest in it in large cities and it became one of the profitable theatrical , properties, a new audience having grown up for it since the play was in its heyday.  

The company was that of Salter and Martin, best known of the Uncle Tom producers, and its cast had Milt G. Barlow as Uncle Tom, with a cast of 60, not to mention those famous bloodhounds for the chase across the ice. Plantation songs and dances were provided, of course, and a special children’s matinee was offered.

Irish singing comedian Andrew Mack, whose An Irish Gentleman, by Ramsay Morris, was  listed in these annals the week before last at the Grand Opera House, was now ensconced across town at the Gayety. “Mack has a sweet tenor voice, a graceful carriage and his manner is quite devoid of that egotism so harmful to the average portrayer of Celtic heroes,” praised the Dail Times.

Also basking in Brooklyn attention again was another actor specializing in Irish characters, his The Cruiskeen Lawn, which he also wrote, having played in Brooklyn earlier in the season. The show incorporated many specialty acts, including real Irish pipers. In one of the scenes a series of dissolving views entitled “The Visions of Erin” were displayed. As usual, McCarthy’s “acting dog,” Jack, was a hit of the most “howling” character, as one wag put it.

The four vaudeville and burlesque houses—Hyde & Behman’s, the Star, the Empire, and the Brooklyn Music Hall, were active with the usual round of performers of every description. Most notably, May Howard and her extravaganza occupied the Star, with a company of 30 offering “new music, songs, dances, jokes, scenery, and costumes.” On Sunday, May 13, the house offered John Isham’s Octoroons in a “concert,” which appears to have been a ruse to get around the Sunday blue laws. The company contained “some of the best colored singers before the public.” The Gayety had been doing something similar with “concerts” for months, and repeated it this same Sunday night.

Most impressive of the vaudeville stars was matinee idol Maurice Barrymore, once again in Augustus Thomas’s one-act, “A Man of the World,” at the Brooklyn Music Hall. He’d performed it with Palmer’s Company in New York in the days before first-class actors ventured into vaudeville. The rest of his company offered traditional acts. Meanwhile, the Empire Theatre presented Ed F. Rush’s White Crook Extravaganza. The company’s burlesques were called “A Royal Reception” and “The Klondike Millionaires” (another sign of Klondike mania). And headlining at Hyde & Behman’s were William Clifford and Maud Huth, she being among the best singers of “coon” songs in the business. The usual assortment of acrobats, comics, blackface, and musical artists was also there.