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Show The Play's the Thing! Sing a song o' six-pence, a pocket full of hay; Eight and two good orphans put into a play! WITH THEIR MATRON and beadle thrown in, and gentlewomen and sturdy men, dandies, and masqueraders galore, moonlight music, laughter, and gowns as variegated as the flowers of Mother Earth, and some as filmy and alluring as the moonbeams themselves (you recall Ruth Scowcroft, Cora Mortenson, Lottie Hammer and a dozen other habitues of the Belsize?), add Love; eternal Intrigue; Sorrow, young, untutored; Joy, matured and fully valued, and you have act three. But we are getting ahead of the story. A middle-aged doctrinaire, deciding, that it is his duty to marry, selects from an orphanage a young girl, whom he educates. After a lapse of time he realizes that he loves her and makes his proposal, but so delicately that she imagines he is asking her to marry his scapegrace nephew, who is her ideal, and to whom she has been since their first meeting "like a red, red rose." Enter act three-and the doctrinaire's awakening. "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley" when little cupid draws his bow. "Some must laugh and some must weep. So runs the world away!" The final curtain portrays our hero standing alone, his thoughts known only to the Creator of the law that through suffering man can comprehend His majesty, at the door of the cottage he had built for his intended bride, listening to the young voices within, vibratile with the wonder of love, singing joyously: O my love is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June! We are proud of our cast. Stanley Rhees played the doctrinaire with the finish and comprehension of an established professional. Mary Woolley as the beloved maid was charming, capricious, womanly. John Croft was effective and forceful as Roger Good- lake, and Vera Malan, looking entrancingly beautiful, gave a splendid characterization. Jack Wright is entitled to a share in first honors for his delineation of Sir Harry Trimble- stone, effeminate dandy. Frank Newman was good as the young hero. Ellis Barker and Lettie Ririe were splendid in their character roles, as was David McKay as the quaint fiddler. Russell Petty, Effie Kasius and Josephine Volker were clever. Indeed, there was not a part in the presentation that was not well sustained. "Mice and Men" was produced under the direction of Blanche Kendall McKey. BEHOLD THE SENIORS in "A Strenuous Life." Strange, isn't it, the week before gradu- ation? One would expect limpid streams of tranquility. But the president of the class and placidity are not harmonious. Hats off to the Seniors for presenting a recognized farce and paying an honest royalty for the same. "A Strenuous Life" gives a hilarious picture of college existence. It was written by Richard Walton Tully, who has given to the stage "The Rose of the Rancho," "The Flower," and "A Bird of Paradise." The cast scored a decided "hit." The strenuousness of the farce was exhibited in the efforts of Grace Stone, Ruth Evans, Theron Jones and Ellis Barker to carry off first honors. |