GERMAN PLAY TODAY

Under the auspices of the Deutscher Verein Mr. Heinrich Conried will present Ludwig Fulda's "Jugendfreunde" at 2.30 o'clock this afternoon at the Colonial Theatre. This will be the fifth time that Mr. Conried, entirely at his own expense and with no profit to himself, has brought his Irving Place Theatre Company here in order to devote its proceeds to the funds of the Germanic Museum. Harvard University can thus in a semi-official way contribute by this performance to the silver wedding of the German Emperor who has made such generous gifts to the University.

Mr. Conried, now manager of the Irving Place Theatre, has for years been engaged in the management of theatrical and operatic companies. He has received the Order of the Crown from the German Emperor and the order for Art and Sciences of Italy and Belgium.

The play is a jovial dissertation on marriage, its risks, its illusions, its dangers, and the solid foundations of its happiness and success. The action presents four couples, three of which are decidedly ill-mated and Pickwickian, and consequently are drawn into all sorts of entanglements and paradoxical complications, while the courtship of the fourth forms an agreeable and pleasing contrast by the good sense, independent thought and true feeling which make the friendship of this pair finally mature into love. The plot is simple and perspicuous and does not require a detailed analysis, but it is handled in a witty and clever manner, and there is not a dull line in the whole comedy. It is a play of unquestionable artistic merit and a striking refutation of the charge of heaviness so often raised against German writers.

That Mr. Conried's production of it will be unusually well done and acceptable seems certain from the fact that two of the principal characters will be in the hands of particularly distinguished artists. Herr Walden of the Deutsches Theatre and Frau Reisenhofer of the Lessing Theatre of Berlin, while all the other parts are taken by leading members of the Irving Place Theatre Company.