“Stop! Look! Listen!”

Singing.

"At the Farm," "I Love a Piano," "The Girl on the Magazine," "Hula Hula," "Ragtime Melodrama," "Take Off a Little Bit," "I'll be Coming Home With a Skate On," "Father Wanted Me to Learn a Trade," "Blow Your Horn," "When I Get Back to the U.S.A.," and "Everything in America is Ragtime."

Dillingham has another hit. It's lucky for other musical comedy producers Charles Dillingham likes to check up his bank account once in a while or he would flood the market with hits. In "Stop! Look! Listen!" Mr. Dillingham has a musical show everybody will want to see and enjoy - and it is one everybody can see, from the child to the grandmother. There's something in it for all, and not the least is the music Irving Berlin has written. He also wrote the lyrics. Nothing can say more for Irving Berlin's production music than Mr. Dillingham did when he produced a second "Berlin show." This Dillingham feller is a modest guy. He puts on a show Harry Lauder would pay money to see, and then sticks in Gaby Deslys as an extra attraction, on top of the best balanced cast any musical comedy ever had. That's fortunate for Gaby. It sets her off. Seeing Gaby now is seeing a performer, for neither Gaby nor anyone else could help looking like one when playing opposite finished artists like Harry Fox and Joe Santley. Those two boys with Doyle and Dixon are the big hits of the piece. Harry Fox walks away with all there is in the straight comedy line. He goes right through the performance, making them laugh all the time, has never been so legitimate and has never been so far away from Harry Fox before. Mr. Santley has so much class to himself as a light singing and dancing juvenile he could give a performance on a bare stage and make it stand up. There's not a more pleasant sight in New York today than to watch Mr. Santley work in this show. Gaby knows she's got performers next to her and it keeps the French girl on her toes. Doyle and Dixon are made to dance themselves hoarse by an audience that can't get enough of this team's stepping. They are a team that originated and originates all of their dances. Firstly, in blackface, they do two or three routines and latterly as rube constables they finish up with old and new dances to the limit of their endurance. When this show goes on the road, if Gaby goes along, she will have to carry an extra dressing room for her hats. Such hats! They are the sky scrapers of head gear, freakish, outlandish nonsensical and costly, but the women seem to like the hats, and when Gaby is leading a number or singing alone by herself one can't tell whether she or the hats are putting her over. Like 'Everything in America Is Ragtime," in the third (and last) act. It's sung by Gaby by her lonesome, but should be sung by Blossom Seeley, who returned to her own earlier in the performance by so ably taking care of "The Hula Hula," one of the song hits of the piece. It was Miss Seeley's single chance of the evening, and she went right to it. Tempest and Sunshine, at 10:15, appeared for their first and last time, doing "Teach Me How to Love," a catchy composition. They did nicely with it, placed in the prettiest set framework on the night. The scene was called "At the Farm." Gaby and Mr. Santley could have easily handled that Tempest and Sunshine number. it proves the prodigality of Mr. Dillingham as a producer when he will pay this $500 or $600 salaried team to merely sing one song. The story of "Stop! Look! Listen!" is by Harry B. Smith, programmed as the writer of the book. Whatever there is of a book, Frank Lalor has to saddle. What he thinks of the book's dialog is probably his own saddle. What he thinks of the book's dialog is probably his own secret, but Mr. Lalor gets a laugh quite often and as miraculously considering. The changes are Mr. Lalor's best laughs are his own. R.H. Burnside staged the production. That tells everything about it in the first line. There are three, probably four, song hits. The strongest is "I Love a Piano," sung by Harry Fox in Scene 3 of Act 1, with a continuous piano of six divisions and players spread across the stage. The next is "The Girl on the Magazine," sung by Joseph Santley before a special drop containing the front page of "Vogue," from which emerges four Vogue-cover girls. "Hula Hula" is the other, and the fourth possibility is "When I'm Out With You," by Gaby and Mr. Santley. The "Magazine" song has the sweetest melody. The novelty numbers are led by the "Ragtime Melodrama," the finale of the second act. It is a travestied meller in ragtime music and lyric, and one of the best laughmakers of the night. Probabl also it is quite the best thing in comedy ensemble lyric ever written. Another is "Take Off a Little Bit," a bathing house scene (painted without regard to the perspective), led by Gaby, with six girls in bathing houses stripping down to bathing costumes. A setet of male principals have a comedy number called after the show's name and they do a great deal with it. It is the only spot in the show where Harry Fox's "Success" is used and then it is a part of the lyric. Shortly after this Harry Pilcer, who previously had done a light dance with Gaby, scores an individual and very healthy score in an eccentric "souse" stair dance, to a number called "I'll Be Coming Home With a Skate On." Mr. Pilcer's work in it is very fine, rather dangerous and concludes with a dandy fall down the entire flight of steps. Mr. Fox has a comedy number in "Father Wanted Me to Learn a Trade." He gets it away over as he does all of his songs. With Fix and Santley as song leaders for a show of this sort, if the songs are there you are going to know it. Therefore, the songs and the singers form a great combination. The second act is set in Hawaii. The second scene of it is in "one" with a Hawaiian octet in front of a drop, playing a Marathon Hawaiian medley. One of the members of the octet appeared to know what was coming, for he sat down on a stool when the thing started. But that wasn't as bad as the drop, about the only blot in a faultless scenic investiture that made the show's background always good to look upon. This drop may have been of the outskirts of Honolulu, but it looked like the Hudson River, going up or down, and it had a full moon that seemed to have been left there through a shortage of paint. There are lots of girls, and pretty ones, lots of costumes, prettier, and Mr. Dillingham stops at nothing, even to giving six show girls "parts." They are Olga Olonova, Tot Qualters, Renee Smythe, Julia Beabein, Flo Hart and Ethel Sykes, all of them looking better than their names sound. Justine Johnson is there as well for looks and Justine's mother in the play (Florence Morrison) almost has as much to do with the plot as Mr. Lalor, Miss Morrison dragging comedy out of the role through the use of her voice. Walter Wills took nice care of a managerial character, singing early "Blow Your Horn," and Mr. Berlin also wrote a red fire, "When I Get Back to the U.S.A.," in which was mentioned George Cohan, perhaps to square it. There's nothing "borrowed." Everybody's doing his own stuff. The only implication might be the suggestion from Leo Carrillo's chink story in the Fox-Doyle and Dixon Honolulu scene. But that's nothing to be seriously taken, since it's but the start of a bit. Yes, "Stop! Look! Listen!" is better than "Watch Your Step." That first Berlin show put on by Dillingham had its comedy forced - the fun of the second production comes naturally and "Stop! Look! Listen!" is a corking all-around entertainment. The musical comedy managers of Broadway could well heed the title sign in front of the Globe theatre. It will be there the rest of the season.

Variety, 41:5 (12/31/1915)