CRIMSON PLAYGOER

It is said that "La du Barry, Maitresse de Roi" was written for Madame Cecile Sorel by Messieurs Aderer and Ephraim. It seems scarcely credible. At any rate it is the play chosen to show her off to greatest advantage before American audiences. She has elected to play it seven times this week, and "Camille" only twice. Whatever the vehicle in which she apears, Boston is favored of the god in having her at the Opera House for even so short a time, but it seems a maestros pity that some play of less pictorial and elementary nature might not have been her choice.

"La Maitresse de Roi" is nothing if not graphic. There is great beauty in its stage designing, a meticulous eye for details, and more than an attempt at recalling the best of French art in the little scenes within scenes in which the Comedie Francaise revels. The play is a show-piece. It has the further advantage for foreign consumption that it is readily understood. The enunciation of the players is nicely turned to aid foreign ears. But it is not necessary to depend upon the actors' speech. There is the program to fall back upon; and the very situations themselves are usually self-explanatory.

With all of its mannered excellence the play is not satisfying, no more satisfying than Madame Sorel herself. She has been presented with a modern play, a play in which the action deserts the wings on several occasions for the very stage itself; a circumstance quite out of the classical French tradition. An invasion of her castle grounds by a mob and the epilogue wherein she is guillotined furnish her with the harshest of realities. And Madame Sorel treats them with that same graceful, classic restraint which leaves them empty of matter however admirable the form. Give her an abstraction of the more important realities and a concretion of the trivialities and she is more than a forthright American mind can demand and almost too good for its powers of appreciation.

She appears at her very best at the very first, and only one later scene permits her the same fine commonplace of circumstance upon which to embroideries the curtain rises upon her own levee, which gathers momentum as she gathers momentum, the audience is aware that it being treated to something almost around American powers of production. The great canopied bed may seem at times to engulf her, but it requires no more than a moment and the tip of her shoulder to center attention and no more than a mirror and a pat to her hair to render her regal. The whole first act moves incredibly fast, as it passes in review scenes so excellently staged and so richly coloured that they seem parts of a never ending tapestry. Every gesture made upon the stage, and every inflection, beckons the audiences' interest on. Mannequins and dandys, cardinal and king, jeweler and soldier, lover and lady-in-waiting make their bows and their requests and are dismissed. Here, if ever, Sorel is superb.

The support provided by the rest of the cast is excellent. M. Louis Ravet, as Louis XV, fulfills all the demands, which history makes upon his portrait. He is far outshone by Monsieur De Sax, who plays the role of the Due Debrissac, for there is a vigor to the performance of M. de Sax lending to many scenes that note of reality which the playwrights demand and which Mme. Sorel seems unable to give.

In the part of the soldier De Laubry, saved from execution by the intervention of du Barry, M. Rolla Norman is often more convincing than Sorel, but it is she who seems to lend fire to his lovemaking, aiding him to reach heights of ardor which she herself does not attain.