Last Season’s Records Proved Inability of Newspaper Writers to Show How
Dramatic Winds Were Blowing.
Of what use are dramatic critics anyway? Brady’s attack on them from the
stage last winter was a mere pin-prick to the humiliation they must feel
as makers of public opinion in connection with “The Lion and the Mouse.”
When the play was brought out in New York last fall the comments were
almost universally adverse, yet the people took to the piece like ducks
to water, and it looks now as if it would run the year round at the
Lyceum. When it was tried in London, on the other hand, the reviews were
exceedingly favorable, and yet the thing lasted barely two weeks.
Take, for example, the London _Daily Telegraph_, which summed up its
report in these words: “To last night’s audience, let it be added, the
piece made evidently a very direct and forcible appeal, the applause at
the end of the third act, as on the final fall of the curtain, being of
the most tumultuous and enthusiastic description.”
The _Standard_ declared: “‘The Lion and the Mouse’ is a play to be
seen—it is imperfect and crude, but it is drama, strong, intense,
undeniable.”
The _Tribune_ even went so far in its praise that it felt constrained to
add: “As a sop to our national self-respect, however, we may remember
that the author, Charles Klein, hails originally from this side of the
Atlantic.”