“The Sweetmeat Game”

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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)