1 proved once more, however, in her capital performance of Suzanne, that she is admirably fitted for the higher order of comedy. Her company did passing well. Mr. Whiting was particularly good as Glaciere, and so was Mr. Buckstone as Anatole. Mr. Sothern had Mr. Wallack's shoes to feel uncomfortably nervous in, but he was courageous and skillful to the last. MARGARET MATHER. "LEAH, THE FORSAKEN," is a story of passionate love and boundless hate, of inexcusable cruelty in man and woman. It teaches nothing, it does not amuse, nor does it stir ennobling emotions. As a play, it is stale, flat and unprofitable. And why does not Miss Mather cut it from her repertoire? It is a terrible tax upon her physical development and her vocal powers, both of which are admirable, and it is apt to divert her artistic talent and rob it of whatever subtlety it contains. The entrance of Leah in the first act, pursued by the village mob, afforded Miss Mather the one strong picture in the performance. Her swift, graceful motions, her defiant attitudes, her blending of trembling fear with haughty courage, was most natural, with the nature of a splendid animal that is hunted to the death. After this, the young tragedienne grows too vehement, and works altogether too hard. She should not flop so beneath her curse, and when she curses in turn, she abuses her pretty, feminine throat most shamefully. The character is an outrageous one to impose upon a handsome young woman. Milnes Levick did fairly well with the miserable part of Nathan. Frederick Paulding was an utterly insipid and awkward Rudolph. The other parts were done in the conventional manner, with no glimpse of superiority, unless it was in the personal appearance of Mr. O'Kane Hillis as Lorentz. This week Miss Mather will give "The Honeymoon." BROOKLYN NOTES. CHRISTMAS Week is always a dull season in the theatrical line, and nowhere could this be more strikingly illustrated than at the Brooklyn Theatre, where Gillette's play, "Held by the Enemy," has been playing to only half-filled houses. The play is splendidly mounted and finely acted throughout, but the people spend their money for presents just now. This week Hoodman Blind." Mr. and Mrs. George S. Knight have also suffered by reason of the Christmas season, for while they have played Over the Garden Wall" with all of their old time vim, the Park Theatre has looked somewhat deserted. This week, Dixey in “ Adonis." 66 46 The Grand Opera House has held its own against the dullness of the present holiday season, although Frank Mayo has been capitally supported in his excellent play of "Nordeck." Miss Alice Lorimer and her lovely dimples have created sad havoc over here among the young men. This week, Frank Mayo in "The Three Guardsmen." At the Criterion Theatre, Mr. Louis James and Miss Marie Wainwright have played to indifferent audiences for the same reason as above assigned to the other places of amusement. In no other better manner could the Brooklyn managers popularize their respective places of amusement so much as by cutting down the interminable intermissions between acts. Fifteen to twentyfive minutes is too long a wait. Audiences grow weary and discontented. A little attention from the proper persons will correct the cause for much complaint on this score. THE WEEK IN NEW YORK. CHRISTMAS shopping has, undoubtedly, made a great many people too tired to go to the theatre at night, nevertheless, the week past has not been particularly disappointing to managers. All the play-houses have been well filled. At the Madison Square. "Jim the Penman" has overwhelmed the house every night with orders for seats. None of them were forged, however. Mr. Palmer will probably have a merry Christmas. "Love in Harness" at Daly's is considered a good suggestion to newly-married couples, and young wives and husbands say, "I told you so" to each other alike. Mr. Daly has harnessed his affairs in such a way that Christmas to him will be a most digestive day. His lieutenant, Richard Dorney, will please call at this office, and receive his plum-pudding. At Wallack's, Mr. Henley still goes on in his wicked work of strangling sweet Miss Annie Robe. "Moths," is considered demoralizing indeed by the Evening Post, but it has not demoralized the boxoffice of Wallack's by a long shot, and this proves that the people like that sort of demoralization. We haven't anything now to spare but good wishes and a few back copies of THE THEATRE, but if friend Arthur wishes a few for himself and that big dog of his, he may send a good long stocking after them. A Merry Christmas to Lester Wallack! May his honored head grace Broadway and 30th St. many years longer. As for John Gilbert and Madame Ponisi, God bless 'em. As for the young fry they can take care of themselves. The Casino is doing the best kind of confectionery work for the holidays, and Rudolph and Edward Aronson have every reason to be dead in love with "Erminie." They don't need | Christmas wishes. We hope Nat. Goodwin, at the Bijou, won't rattle his bones over the stones for a good while, yet Carraway Bones is a grave title for a character this time of year. May the Christmas not prove green, for that would make a fat graveyard. Mr. Donnelly, who runs things up at the Bijou, has our compliments for the season. Mr. Harrigan knows this Christmas will show the best period so far in his career, and every one wishes joy as well as the gods who gave it. Martin Hanley, who realizes his responsibilities, and who has brought the Park Theatre up to the nightly condition of a jammed house, proposes to interest the whole United States by carrying the "O'Reagans" from New York to California. This will be in spring, but now while we have him here with us, may his Christmas bring him especial good cheer. Dear Rosina Vokes and her company should have all the best part of every wish bone this holiday season. the American turkey embrace the English plum pudding, and let John Duff have some of the stuffing. Miss Dauvray is certain of her Christmas, and so are Messrs. Sothern, Pigott and Buckstone of being treated well. latter is a son of his father and so is the first mentioned. Here's to their jolly good memory! Down at the Union Square Theatre and the Star, everything's prospering. To one and all of them, and to everybody connected with them, and to every play-house in the United States and, in fact, everywhere, even in Bolivia, if they have 'em there, THE THEATRE wishes A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! Let The J: FLEMING⋅ DES ART CHAT. THE regular fall exhibition at the American Art Galleries, which will close about the first of next month, is a collection of 229 works in oil by American artists. The pictures have been well selected, and on the whole make a very creditable display. They represent the younger element of our artists (indeed, quite a few of the names on the catalogue are new to us). I don't think that there are a dozen academicians among the hundred and fifty exhibitors. Some of the canvases have the numbers of the Paris salon upon them. BUT mark this, there's not a picture which, and time again shown his ability in making the most interesting and well worked out compositions. And without doubt there are other similar cases. Yet I think it worth the space I have given to notice it that so many well painted canvases by our young painters should have been brought together and yet be so uninteresting in their subject matter. TAKE for example that large canvas in gallery C, "The Cooper," (146) by Charles S. Parker. What interest can the spectator have in this old man at work on a barrel? The great French painter, Millet, often chose such subjects, but how differently he handled them! He hid all the auxiliaries of the com " for its pictorial recommendations, I mean qual-position and the figures alone were prominent. ities other than technical, is worth crossing Madison Square on a slushy day to see. They are well drawn, well painted, worth examining. But they are interesting only as paintings, not as pictures. I mean this to apply, of course, more particularly to the figure compositions than the landscapes, for among the latter are many of great beauty. It is in figure painting that our younger artists fail to show any marked ability. They are fearfully meager, almost barren, in their ideas. They spend the greatest amount of labor on the most bald subjects. They seem to take pleasure in painting nothing, well. They have studied how to paint, but nature seems to have denied them the gift of knowing what to paint. Or, having selected a good subject, how to make it into a picture. Of course, this present exhibition does not represent the full scope of our younger painters' talents. It merely happens that here they outnumber the older men, and their works are very uninteresting as pictures. And I take this as evidence, not as a positive proof, that their ability for composition is limited. Indeed, the very existence of several works by Mr. Chas. F. Ulrich, would serve as a damper upon any such positive argument. None of his three compositions are anything more than studies. Yet Mr. Ulrich has time Then he gave them such intense action that they seemed to work with body and soul. They exemplified the command with the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." We never missed the fact that they were at work, though often we forgot to inquire what at. Thus they were poems. But in this picture of "The Cooper," the barrel is as salient as the workman. The picture is a studio study, nothing more. We are in no wise made to feel any sympathy for the cooper at all. Beside this, the canvas is the size for an historic picture, something grand or heroic should have been put upon it. Not a mere barrel as large as life, with an uninteresting man beside it. IN gallery A is hung William E. Marshall's colossal head of "Jesus of Nazareth.” It is ten feet high by seven feet wide. A proof of the engraving, by the artist, is on exhibition, also, and circulars are given with the catalogues, which advertise impressions for sale at the low price of $100.00, $125.00, and $150.00 each! This circular tells us that, the artist's desire was to create an ideal of the Saviour of the world that should combine Divinity with the highest order of intellectuality and the sublimest vital spirit." That he has “built up a purely imaginative creation, ideal in vastness, grandeur, and majestic beauty," and further we are told the plate has approached perfection () slowly and arduously." "Ideal in vastness" is good, and it was well to put in the circular that the work has reached "perfection." I should think M. Munkacsy would feel badly about this, as we are given to understand that he is not satisfied with his head of Christ. * HERBERT DENMAN'S large work, also in gallery A, "The Trio," (54) three girl musicians, the most prominent one playing upon a harp, is a very worthy picture, but with no great beauty to it. The drawing is good, the coloring quite true, but it is bald in its pictorial qualities. Now upstairs is another picture again good in drawing, but how unattractive are the spink spank clean negroes going home from their labor at "The End of the Day"! (48) Mr. George W. Chambers, who is the author of the work, has learned to paint very cleverly, but he has wasted his time in trying to make a poem with negroes as his theme. Chas. F. Ulrich's single figure, "The New Model," (209) is a fine study. His other two contributions are only fair. F. D. Millet's 'Girl Reading," is very much better than his "Tambourine Player," in the late Academy Exhibition. But again, the picture means little, and the plants at the window might have been purer in color. Of George De Forest Bush's two exhibits. "Indians Hunting the Night Heron," (31) and "Plumage Hunting," (31a) I may say the same as I said of his Academy exhibits. - E. K. Is the world going to the bad? Not yet. There is a saving clause of domesticity. Visit the theatre. Watch the audience through a single act. Impecunious husband and equally, of course, impecunious wife. "My darling, have I taken you from a home of luxury to live amid this? (Business Gesture which takes in the conventional hovel). "To think that this should be our home and the home of our child." (Both go to cradle and embrace). True and loving wife: Your home is my home, and our child is the sacred link that shall always bind us together." (The gallery applauds and sheds tears, and the sympathetic pit raises umbrellas to keep off the deluge). The home, " the fireside, the husband, the wife and the child are the things that still touch the American heart, and keep it pure and true. — Buffalo Express. IN THE LIMELIGHT'S GLARE. IT is a sort of hobby with me to take a fling. at the dramatic and musical critics every now and then. I read them all, and they are unfathomable enigmas. Take the veteran who writes that highly ornamental and gymnastic feuilleton in a dramatic contemporary each week. He believes in Minnie Maddern. There, now, shouldn't that be encouraging? But after evincing this excellent taste, he loses his equilibrium entirely and becomes a lunatic over the Pauline of Mrs. Langtry. He has grown gray in the business, and yet asserts without a tremor of the eyelid that Mrs. Langtry is not only a good actress, but she is truly magnificent. He metaphorically pats her on the back, and regrets that the performance is thus restricted. Then he dissects "Claudian," raves over Katheryn Kidder in “ Held by the Enemy," and throws himself away generally. We look in that lovely, great big paper, the Evening Post. We float hither and thither among campaign documents, Oldboys, and those copious "letters to the Editor," and, ha! here is the amusement department at last. What says the gentleman about the opera? Well, if it is an Italian opera he sneers so that you could draw a picture of him if you were skilled with the crayon. But if it is German opera: "Ah! send up four bushels of adjectives, please, and have them double-barreled, square-beveled and pink-tinted." Oh, this gentleman cannot be German. Is it possible? Whoever would have thought it? Mr. William Winter, I bow to you. You are all right. You lay it on rather heavily when Mary Anderson comes to town, but the fact is that the man whom Mary does not own is an unenviable wretch. Among the dramatic reporters there are several who hit a thing correctly by accident. Sometimes it is the Herald and sometimes it is the World. They never do it simultaneously. The Times is pretty substantial, and the Sun is incisive and airy. I think the writers on these last two papers often know a good thing when they see it. Then there is a vast amount of criticism that says nothing at all. When you have finished, you can't tell for the life of you whether you've |