S

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Comedy

Club

Supplement

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"MONEY" DELONGS TO HIHH
ANCIENT ORDER-OFCOMIC

1

Stands Alone Without Rival
Acting As Well As Best
Play of Victorian Era
Dramatics.

As Best
Acted
in


BULWEB,PORTRAYER OF SOCIETY
Has Spared No Effort in Making Local
Production As Good As
- Professional.
The comedy of "Money" was orig-
inally produced on the 8th of De-
cember, 1840, at the Haymarket
theater, London. The dramatic critic
of the "Lterar e," a contem-
poraneous London p ,ation, says
of its performance: "A better acting
or better acted play has not been
brought out in our day, and we re-
member 'John Bull." It often by its
sparkling allusions, recalled the
'School for Scandal,' to our minds; and
the drop-scene certainly fell upon
every act amid bursts of applause at
the skill displayed in the construction
of these pauses, giving each U scenic
effect and interest that could not be
.improved.. The strength of the play
is not in plot, nor in actual and con-
sequential circumstances; '"but the
general power of this performance be-
longs to an ancient, recognized, and
high order of the comic-the power of
seizing the characters and manners
of the age, and holding the mirror
up to society; and that, too, after it
has so long been asserted that the
progress of civilization had destroyed
the materials for such a purpose."
It is this power of Lytton's to por-
tray society, that makes "Money" a
play of perennial interest for each
succeeding century finds keen enjoy-
ment in the manners and customs of
generations gone. And Lytton's per-
sonnages are so vividly, so exactly
drawn that they stand out before a
pesent-day audience with a startling
naturalness that easily bridges the
chasm between today and the early.
eighteenth century in which they liv-
ed. The old newspaper critic quoted
above, says of them:
"The characters all stand out well
from the mass. Dudley, alias Deadly
Smooth, the cool, calculating gambler,
who, when asked, 'Can you keep a
secret?' happily replies, 'I have kept
myself,' is one instance. Graves, ever
lamenting his lost shrew of a wife,
and betrayed into laughable extrava-
gances by his very griefs, winding
up the whole by a witty hit as he goes
off with the widow, is another ex-
ample when he says, 'Sainted Maria!
thank heaven you are spared this
affliction!' Stout, a radical M. P., all
for the enlightenment of the nation, is
a third original and striking part. In
Sir John Vesey, also, there are sever-
al traits of much originality; and Sir
Frederick Blount, a fashionable cox-
comb, is nearly as good. Lord Gloss-
more, as an aristocratic contrast to
Stout, is well imagined; and the pri
cipal character, that of Evelyn, is ex
tremely forcible, both in the feeling,
and apparently reckless and bitterly
satirical situation in which he speaks
and acts."
It is in the words of this last char-
acter, Evelyn, that Lytton shows to
the full his power of cogent, eloquent
expression of feeling. Many of Eve-
lyn's lines are filled with a biting
cynicism that is withering in its keen-
ness; yet it is those same lines that
betray the author's mate genius for
poetical utterances.
Six years after its premier produc-
tion, "Money" was again put on in
London, at the Park theater, and met
with as great a success as at the first
presentation. Since that time, it has
been revived again and again by lead-
ing actors both in America and Eng-
land, and has always met with mark-
ed favor from the public. With the
(Continued on page 6)

CAST OF CRARACTERS
Evelyn......................................Dion S. Birney
Sir John Vesey..................................David Cohn
Lord Glossmore............... ................B. D. Welling
Blount.........................................Joe Turpin
Graves .........................................Lawrence Clayton
Smooth........ .............................Donald Kiskadden
Sharp ........................................H. L. Nutting'
Stout .............................................Martin Briggs
Old Club Member ........ .......................Waldo Fellows
Maid ...........................................Catherine Reighard
Toke ................... ... .......................G. F..M cGraw
Crimson...................................Gordon Eldredge
Grab ..........................................:.....Harold Pilgrim
Tabouret ........................................L. L. Langworthy
Clara Douglas.................................Isabelle Rizer
Lady Franklin....... ......................Marguerite Stanley
Georgina Vesey ............. ......................Louise Robson

ill

EDWARD EARLE BULWER, LORD LYTTON, MAN OF LETTERS

DION S. BIRNEY
Who is cast in the lead role of Evelyn.
"He, is ambitious and poverty drags
him down. He loves, and poverty
stands like a spectre before the altar.
To be loved again, he will turn opium
eater and dream of the Eden he may
never enter."

MARGUERITE STANLEY
alias Lady Franklin, the smooth pat-
roness experienced in worldly wiles,
who untangles the knot that youth
cannot, and who in passing acquires
a husband for herself.
That Miss Stanley is capable of
handling an important and significant
role was showI by her masterly per-
formance in "The Magistrate" of last
year. Her farewell year in Michigan
Miss Stanley leaves an indelible mem-
ory of her work for the Comedy club
and figures as one of its most valued
and able players.

More than twenty novels, three
volumes of original and one of trans-
lated poetry, five successful plays (al-
though one of them only after revi-
sion), and other writings, form the
literary output of Edward Earle Bul-
wer, Lord Lytton, the greatest .liter-
ary fop of his day. An aristocrat of
intellect and culture, he poured out,
in incessant stream, essays, poems,
translations, articles enough to make
the busiest grub in Grub street howl.
There was no department of literary
or even political endeavor in which
he was not interested and upon which
the vigor of his personality did not,
with more or less vehemence im=
pinge. He was the busiest man in a
leisurely age. To his contemporaries
he was a poser, a relic of Don Juan
without the latter's essential manli-
ness. Yet he was a boxer of note,
and one of the best fencers of his day.
He was at home in two societies that
liked nothing better than an epigram,
but was never able to lose himself in
anything he wrote. Yet he neglected
his wife, whose charm was such as
in no wise to merit such treatment, or
in most cases to receive it, that he
might the better devote himself to the
pursuit of literature. And long before
he died, his mind's activity had com-
pletely worn out that of his body.
He was born in 1803, and died in
1873, one of the few to have seen the
great transformation which the period
between those dates effected. He was
shrewd enough to see what was go-
ing on. Above everything, his cur-
iosity overleaped the moon. At the
age of eight or nine he terrified his
mother by asking if she were not
sometimes overcome by a sense of her
own identity. She judged him ready
for school. At the age of fifteen he
published a volume of poems, and a
year later indulged in an unsuccessful
love affair which he claimed influenc-
ed and oppressed him during his
whole life. , And at school he was the
best pugilist. All his life he was
unique, and the early and mid-Vic-
torians found him shocking in the
extreme. Tennyson he made fun of.
Consciously or not, his opinions were
puss gentleman that's all perfume,
who objects to the letter R as being
too wough. He never does anything
that is silly nor never says anything
that is wise."
Mr. Turpin is no novice in the his-
trionic art. In ante Michigan days he
shone as a star of the first magnitude
in a series of plays in which he took
varied parts. Rumor has it that the
above epigram fits Joe Turpin, to aT,
maybe that's why he was chosen for
one of the capital comedy leads of
"Money."
Thanks.
The editor of the Comedy club sup-
plement wishes to thank Miss Mar-
guerite Stanley, Messrs. John S.. Swit-
zer, Edgar A. Mowrer and Harold
P. Scott for cooperating in the col-
lection of news for these columns.

different from that of everybody else.
Shakespeare he called vicariously in
one of his novels, "the poet who has
never once drawn a character to be
met with in actual life,-who has
never once descended to a passion
that is false or a personage that is
real." He spoke of himself as an ar-
tist in words. He scorned the people
in an age when democracy was stir-
ring uneasily. His plays, "The Duch-
ess de la Valliere," "The Lady of
Lyons," "Richelieu," "The Sea Cap-
tain," afterwards revived under an-
other name, and "Money," are about
the only plays of the epoch which are
still, considered produceable. They
are stilted, strained, what you will,
but they are good plays. Had Bulwer
stuck to novel writing and been con-
tent to stay within his own limits,
he would have been great; had he
written more plays he might have
made himself immortal by them. But
he was too diffuse. His curiosity
harpooned his creative ability.
His family life was altogether un-
happy.
In January, 1873, died Edward Lord
Lytton, first gentleman, writer, man
of the world, occultist and aristocrat
in letters of his century.

DAVID COHN
alias Sir John Vesey, alais "Stingy
Jack," who thinks "the world's -all
humbug." His is the money God.
When there is a strong masculine
lead to be filled by the Comedy club,
Dave Cohn is invariably picked as
first pretendant in his class. Haying
been an efficient and hard worker in
the interests of the Comedy club for
thepa st three years Cohn now holds
down the dignity of President of; the
club. He needs no introduction to a
local public for all know him to be a
reliable and excellent interpreter of
the preponderant leading parts of the
Comedy club plays.

,,.. ..., ..

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Saturday Evening, December 14th, THE COMEDY CLUB of the Univer
sity of Michigan presents Lytton's Glittering Farce,
(Under Professional Training)
New Whitney. Theatre Curtain 8:15 O'clock