Location:
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Date:
Type:
May Tully sponsors “The Sweetmeat
Game/’ an Oriental dramatic piece in
which Margaret Greene is starred with
a supporting company of Albert Perry
and Fred Goodrow. Ruth Comfort
Mitchell is credited with the authorship. The story is in the home of a
Chinese merchant on New Year’s Eve.
There is much revelry outside and the
Chinaman tells his wife to remain away
from the window^ The wife disobeys,
owing to the pleading of her blind stepson,
who wishes her to tell him of the
hilarity. She is grasped by a drunken
American passerby just as her husband
re-enters the room. He is enraged and
accuses her of infidelity. She pleads
innocence, but he tells her she must
die, placing some poison before her.
She falls in’ faint upon the floor. The
blind son, coming into the room and
groping about, lays his hand upon the
poison, and believing it to be a sweetmeat
eats it. He stumbles out of the
room with his father reappearing. Upon
seeing his wife prostrate upon the floor,
he believes she is dead, he having
learned outside his accusation against
her was wrong. She recovers, informing
her spouse she did not take t^e
poison. Observing it is missing they
look into the next room and see the
blind son dead upon the floor. Both
fall to their knees and pray to the Almighty
as the curtain falls.
The Oriental
atmosphere surrounding the playlet
is mystifying. Quite some of the
talk at the start is not easily grasped
and even after the curtain falls the
average audience is apt to ask what it
is all about.
Source:
Variety 46:3 (03/16/1917)