[omitted review of "Trillby"]

Mr. Clemens's story of interchanged babies and the man who took prints of people's thumbs on bits of glass has been made into a play of four acts and a prologue, and at the Herald Square Theatre last evening the first performance of it took place. The work of dramatization was done by Mr. Frank Mayo, and he has accomplished a most difficult task with a degree of success that is somewhat surprising. The play is not a good one, judged by the technical standards, most of which it violates again and again, but not a few of its scenes are of undoubted interest, and at least one of them is marked by a strength of emotion so great that faults of construction can be easily forgotten.

Like all plays made from books, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" lacks continuity of action. The incidents selected for presentation require and receive much explanation of a kind thoroughly undramatic, and, therefore, dull, and yet after all many of them are left vague and not easy to understand, except by recalling the story in its printed form. This, the inevitable consequence of contracting a broad picture to the limits of a proscenium arch, constitutes the chief weakness of Mr. Mayo's play, and may prevent it from being a popular success, but there is at least a probability that the piece may be saved by the picturesqueness and reality of the types it introduces, by the care and ability with which it is acted, and by the curious ingenuity with which its denouement is brought about. "Shore Acres" won favor on no better ground than "Pudd'nhead Wilson" can offer, and for reasons not notably dissimilar.

The play follows the book with sufficient closeness. In the prologue the children are changed, not exactly as Mr. Clemens chose to do it, but quite as well. In the first act Tom and Chambers are shown as young men, and the villagers are talking about the mysterious thefts. The Italian twins appear and take lodgings in Wilson's own house. The second act brings the confession to Tom by Roxy that she is his mother. The third centres in the duel between Judge Driscoll and the Italian, and the wounding, not murder, of the former by Tom. The trial of the Count and the revelation of Tom's identity by the fingermarks made during his infancy bring the piece to a close.

In the title role Mr. Mayo portrayed with a skill, which it would be difficult to praise too highly, the gentle Pudd'nhead, misjudged by all around him, and patiently waiting for recognition and appreciation from the ignorant villagers. The part is a delightfully sympathetic one, and Mr. Mayo played it with a simplicity and sincerity that enabled him to preserve all its humor, while never losing the dignity of an underlying seriousness.

As Chambers, the "white nigger," Mr. Edgar L. Davenport did work quite as admirable as that of Mr. Mayo, and quite as difficult. Mr. Henley made a terribly realistic Tom Driscoll, heartless, cruel, and cowardly. Mr. Harry Davenport as the courtly Judge, Mr. Odell Williams as a comical, but not impossible, Sheriff, and Mr. Joseph Whiting as a lawyer, were all careful studies of character and harmonious elements of the pictures presented. The Roxy of Miss Mary Shaw was emotionally persuasive, while in the interpolated roles of Wilson's niece and sister, Miss Frances Graham and Miss Lucille La Verne both won cordial applause.

The minor figures, jurymen, slaves, and the like, received more attention than is given to such accessory figures in many productions much more pretentious, and this fact had not a little to do with making the trial scene one of the most effective that has been put on the stage here for years.