“Tiger Rose” was written by Willard Mack and then rewritten under Belasco’s direction and with his assistance. It was first produced at the Shubert Theatre, Wilmington, Delaware, on April 30, 1917: on October 3, that year, it was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, where it is still current (June, 1918) and where it bids fair to remain for many weeks. It is a picturesque and effective melodrama, in four acts (the third being presented as practically an undetached continuation of the second), the scene of which is a frontier post in the Canadian Northwest. The action of that play revolves around the love affair of a French-Canadian girl named Rose Bocion. She is an orphan and the ward of Hector MacCollins, a conventionally austere yet kindly Scotchman, a factor of the Hudson Bay Trading Company, in whose dwelling three of the acts take place. The girl, a lovely flower of the forest, is admired and courted by all the youth for many a mile around, including a capable but dissolute Irishman, Constable Michael Devlin, of the Royal North Western Mounted Police. Rose, however, will have none of them,—for she and Bruce Norton, a young civil engineer from a neighboring construction camp, have met by chance and have become lovers. Norton, in the camp where he is employed, unexpectedly encounters and kills a man who, years earlier, had first misled and then deserted his sister, a married woman, who in consequence committed suicide. Norton makes his escape into the wilderness and seeks to communicate with Rose, his only friend, hoping to obtain her help in getting clear of the region. An Indian squaw employed in the factor’s household bears a message and eventually he succeeds in reaching the girl. But information of his crime has been transmitted to MacCollins’ dwelling, by telephone, where it is received by Devlin. That blackguard, who has been made furious by Rose’s bitterly contemptuous repulse of his dishonorable advances and who has surmised the identity of her lover with the fugitive, is vigilantly watchful, hoping to gratify his jealous hatred while in the performance of his duty. During the interview between Norton and Rose she detects the stealthy approach of Devlin, tracking him. After making a tryst with him at a remote

and abandoned log cabin in the woods, she has barely time to hide her lover in a huge old grand-father’s clock, in the factor’s house. From that precarious concealment Norton escapes, down a trapdoor in the floor, under cover of the dreadful tumult of an appalling electrical storm (most realistically and impressively managed in Belasco’s presentment) and, eventually, makes his way to the appointed meeting place. There, during the next night, he is joined by Rose and a kindly physician, Dr. Cusick, who has discovered her attachment and who, somewhat unwillingly, has consented to assist in the escape of her sweetheart. Various explanations are exchanged and it is revealed that Dr. Cusick (that being an assumed name) is actually the wronged husband of Norton’s sister and has been for years seeking to find and kill the man slain by him. After the family misfortunes have been discussed and an understanding arrived at and after plans for the escape of Norton out of the Dominion have been devised and arranged by the intrepid Rose, the trio are about to separate when the ubiquitous Devlin, who has divined their resort to the ruined cabin, has concealed himself there and listened to their conversation, suddenly emerges from his hiding place and, “covering” the culprit with a pistol, arrests him. Rose, however, abruptly extinguishes the only light in the cabin, at the same instant shooting the weapon out of Devlin’s hand and crying to her love to fly—which he does. Devlin makes an attempt to follow him, striking down and stunning Cusick, but, being unarmed, is stopped by Rose at the pistol point. Then, throughout the night she holds him there. With dawn, however, Norton, who has realized the predicament in which his escape will leave his sweetheart, returns, accompanied by a Jesuit priest whom he has met—and, as Rose will not submit to the removal of her lover to Edmonton, there to stand trial alone, but insists on an immediate marriage to him, the play ends with impending matrimony and the implication that Dr. Cusick, who, it appears has “done the State some service,” will succeed in his declared intention of appealing to the legal authorities for lenient treatment of Norton,—an intention, by the way, which indicates a touching ignorance of the operation of criminal law in the region specified.

All this, if sometimes false to the probabilities of actual life, is always responsive to the purposes of acting, and, as presented by Belasco,—with scrupulous care to every aspect of the stage setting and to every detail of the stage management and with an unusually capable company,—the melodrama merits the success it has achieved. The central character is, of course, Rose Bocion,—who, with euphonious disregard of gender, is called Tiger Rose. This girl is headstrong, impulsive, and intense, she indulges with excessive freedom in violent expletives, and she fights hard for the man she loves. But there is nothing tiger-like in her conduct or her character. On the contrary, Rose, is winsome, brave, loyal, ardent, resourceful and utterly sincere, devoted and unselfish in her love. However, the name makes a striking title for the play. Miss Lenore Ulric, who acts the part, is possessed of exceptional natural advantages,—youth; a handsome face; abundant hair; expressive eyes, dark and beautiful; a slender, lithe figure; a sympathetic voice; strong, attractive personality, and an engaging manner. Her temperament is intense, her nature passionate, her style direct and simple. Her acting reveals force of character, experience, observation, thought, sensibility, ardor, definite purpose, and unusual command of the mechanics of art. It is, moreover, suffused with fervid, sometimes ungoverned feeling (which is a defect), and it is at all times sincere, individual, and interesting. She is an admirable listener, an excellent speaker,—articulating with great care,—and, at moments (as, for example, in a colloquy with Father Tibault as to belief in Diety), the disposition she exhibits in this performance seems altogether childlike and lovely. Under Belasco’s sagacious direction she should go far.

CAST OF “TIGER ROSE.”