16 
LAND &? WATER 
October 3, 1918 
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By W. J. Turner 
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ALTHOUGH a bad play, Eyes of Yoidh (St. James's 
Theatre) is not a bad entertainment. The worst 
plays are not always the most tedious. In fact, 
it is quite a common occurrence for a friend 
to say to you : "Oh, do go and see so-and-so ; it 
is the worst play in London." Of course, these are generally 
plays with titles like The Girl who took the Wrong Turning 
or The Man without a Smile, where the villain, wearing a 
red tie, and with protruding and shining fangs, is seen pur- 
suing the heroine across a rope-ladder, amid shouts of "Stop 
it!", "Let her alone!", "Kick his face!", from frenzied 
partisans all over the house, who bomb him with orange 
pips. Just as he is about to grasp his prey, the hero, pale 
as death, walks slowly on ; the band plays " Rule Britannia" ; 
with a horrible yell, the villain tears at his breast, gasps 
convulsively for air, and, goaded to desperation by the 
howls of the audience, drops into the abyss. The hero 
smiles in a superior fashion, and says": "Darling, I have 
saved you." She replies: "Yes, George!"; and at this 
tender romantic touch the house rises. I don't know how 
these actors are paid, but to play the villain in such plays 
I should want treble the money of the hero. I should not 
be howled at for nothing. In fact, I should not be able to 
play such parts for long without beginning to feel a genuine 
scoundrel, and to wonder when I boarded a bus why people 
did not instantly throw me off. 
Eyes of Youth is not a play of this sort. It is an American 
production, and, like most American plays, it has a good 
idea, which is spoiled by absurd and incompetent writing. 
The idea is that a girl who has many admirers, and offers of 
marriage, and the opportunity of a career as a singer, and is 
on the point of deciding whether she shall 'stay at home, 
marry, or become a singer, is enabled by gazing into a Yogi's 
crystal ^lobe to see her future life enacted before her eyes 
as it would be in the event of each of the three possible deci- 
sions. In the first scene shown by the crystal Gina sees her 
future if she obeys the call of duty, and stays at home. It is 
a school-room scene, she is still unmarried, and is the school 
mistress ; already she is half grey-haii^ed and a nervous 
wreck, openly flouted by the children, and, we learn, about 
to be dismissed by the Board in favour of a younger woman. 
This change is supposed to have taken place in five years. 
There is a painful scene between her and her old lover, who 
has now transferred his affections to her younger sister ; 
but she is so obviously incompetent and invertebrate that 
we have no sympathy with her, and can only look upon the 
lover as a man who has had a hair-breadth escape. 
The curtain falls on the dismal scene of failure and dis- 
illusionment, and when it rises again she is seated before 
the crystal in her father's house on the night when her lovers 
and the operatic impresario are assembled for her decision., 
She is still slightly dazed from this revelation, when in enters 
the lover in question, having left the others dancing to come 
and press his suit. On seeing him, she stares and laughs 
a little hysterically, and when he urges how he loves her, 
she can only gaze at him wide-eyed. This is an excellent 
situation, and Miss Gertrude Elliott was extremely good in it. 
The next time she looks into the crystal she sees what 
her life will be if -she goes with the impresario and becornes 
a singer. It is the best scene of all ; we see her in her dressing- 
room, at the theatre, coming in late, singing a music-hall 
song, and snapping her fingers at her manager and the director 
of the Opera House, who are nearly beside theitjselves with 
worry and arixiety due to her eternal caprice. There is a 
ramping, "tearing scene wildly out of keeping with the charac- 
ter of the girl shown in the first act as incapable of holding 
a few children in order ; but what does truth or consistency 
matter to an American dramatist out to write a iplay that 
"grips" ? However, the scene is decidedly amusing in 
itself and gives Miss Elliott a-chance to show that she can 
do some things extraordinarily well. The impresario (Mr. 
E. Dagnall) and the director of the opera (Mr. Herman de 
Tange) are done to the life ; their frantic despair at her 
refusal to sing with the second tenor (the principal tenor 
being ill), their alternations of wheedling and bullying, their 
threats, gestures and imprecations, are delightfully comic. 
The second tenor, a ridiculous and yet pathetic object, adds 
to the effect by bursting in upon Gina's dressing-room in 
neglige, having heard that the prima donna refuses' to sing 
with him. He is bamboozled by the grossest flattery and 
dispatched. Then follows a bit of truly American melo- 
drama. Gina's. young brother, who has followed her every- 
where and lived upon her, now commands her to sing ; she 
refuses, and says she gets far more from her millionaire 
friends than her manager. The brother collapses, staggers 
to his feet, and calls her a bad, bad girl ; and when she 
declare* that her badness started with her impresario, he 
turns round and shoots the impresario as a signal to the 
stage-manager to drop the curtain. 
Gina now gazes into the crystal for the last time to see 
what will happen if she marries the rich lawyer. She sees 
herself in court, the defendant in a trumped-up divorce suit 
brought bv her husband, who has laid a trap for her, into 
which she has innocently fallen. Why the lawyer, after 
struggling to marry her, now has concocted this elaborate 
plot to divorce her is unexplained ; perhaps there is nothing 
more in it than a passion for going to law. However, she is 
divorced, and with almost indecent haste sijiks very near 
to begging in the streets. Her one true lover returns from 
Mexico, or some wild spot where impecunious young men 
are expected to pick up nuggets, discovers her reclining 
against a lamp-post at a street corner, and marries her. 
The influence of the cinema — or "the movies," as I think 
they call it in the States — is to be seen quite plainly in this 
drama. All American plays are contaminated with "the 
movie" spirit ; and in this, as in most, there is not the slightest 
attempt to portray character and the conflict of character, 
which is the true business of the dramatist. It is pure 
artificial pantomime, with as much coherence or structure 
as a set of quadrilles. It would lose absolutely nothing of 
what merit it has as a light entertainment if "filmed" ; but 
it is pitiful to see the superior apparatus of the theatre and 
the noble craft of the actor wasted on such unmitigated 
rubbish. I am credibly informed that there is not many 
miles from Chicago a picture-palace which bears the following 
legend : 
Come into the movies, 
And mister, sure you'll say, 
Sheridan and Shakespeare 
Have had their little day. 
Come into the movies. 
Girlie, it is grand 
To chew gum in the movies. 
And hold a feller's hand ! 
I must say that this rather gives the show away. It has 
never yet been found necessary in the ca6es of Shakespeare 
and Sheridan for theatrical managers to point out the attrac- 
tiveness of being able to chew gum during the performance. 
As for holding hands, this is the sort of thing that very early 
Victorians might have imagined went on during the hearing 
of Ibsen's plays ; but, as a matter of strict historical accuracy, 
it is a complete innovation. It was not even contemplated 
by any far-sightedness on the part of early cinema pro- 
prietors. It was entirely a discovery of the public's, and a 
discovery to which the great fortunes made in the cinema 
trade are largely due. In England, the weather, so un- 
favourable for sitting out of doors and listening to open-air 
concerts, has been an invaluable asset to the cinema trade. 
It is likely, however, that after the war there will be found 
people enterprising enough to build large winter gardens 
after the Continental fashion, where, in good weather, you 
may wander outside among shrubberies and lawns, and 
listen to an excellent string band, playing good music, and 
obtain light refreshrnents ; or, if the weather is bad, listen 
to the band indoors in a large airy hall or pavilion, where 
you can sit at a small table with friends, and smoke and 
drink. 
Those who have been to Frankfort-on-Main will re- 
member the fine winter gardens there. If we had places 
like that, they and the cinemas would take away from the 
theatres all those people who simply want somewhere to 
go in an evening ; and then the people who want good plays 
would get them. 
" Why should the profiteers have all the wine ? " a modern 
democratic poet has sung. And I would add : " Why should 
the dunderheads have all the fun ? " 
