1900-01-24-New York Sun-Broadway To Tokio A New And Native Extravaganza

New York Sun, 24 January 1900, p. 7

Theatrical Amusements

"Broadway to Tokio," A New and Native Extravaganza.

Cleopatra Leads Some Comic Men Around the World in Quest of Her Lost Heart—Felix Schweighofer's Farewell Performances—All the Bills of the Week.

An extravanga of a distinctly American kind, mixing songs and dances with other cheerful sounds and bright sights was disclosed last night in "Broadway to Tokio" at the New York Theatre. There was so much in it that the performance lasted until after midnight. After the surplus of poor things has been eliminated, the plenty of good ones will constitute a popular entertainment. It has rather more of coherence than most plays of its class possess. The mummy of Cleopatra is brought back to life and beauty but her heart is missing. She and her new owner go un search of it. As they travel from Egypt through America to China modern Antonys of various nationalities fall captive in her train, and she promises that the one who restores her heart shall be rewarded with the love which it will make her capable of. George V. Hobart and Louis Harrison have told the fanciful story in glib prose and jingling verse. A. B. Sloane and Reginald DeKoven have made suitably light and tuneful music. A company of contrasting comedians has been gathered. The woman who follows her lost heart across a continent and an ocean is Fay Templeton. This is not the first time that she has travestied the Enchantress of the Nile. Her real opulence of good looks, her comic mimicry of voluptuousness, and her clever humor as a burlesquer, qualify her for such employment. She is easily and properly the central figure. Never has she appeared more advantageously for herself or an employer. The funny wooers were Joseph Sparks as an Irishman, Ignacio Martinetti as a Frenchman, Joseph Ott as a Mormon, Bert C. Thayer as a sculptor, Nick Long as an Italian and Otis Harlan as a showman. They are a clever lot and each contributes something old or new in the way of a specialty. Others mentionable are Josie Sadler for an unctuous delineation of a German woman, Alice Judson for a babv stare and a high note as a prima donna. Idelene Cotton for good mimicry as a briefly incidental Italian woman and Lew Simmons for oldstyle humor and a funny laugh as a negro. The scenes show the Eden Musée, with some of the wax figures brought to life; a railway car on a transcontinental line, with travesties of travellers and their ways; the Cliff Park at San Francisco, with the high revels of a costume ball in progress; Long Acre Square at night, with some things that happen in upper Broadway and many more that never do, save in stage misrepresentatio; the deck of an ocean steamer, where a charity concert gave the excuss for vaudeville, and a palace in Tokio, where the final ballet was danced.

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