"Lawful Larceny"
"Lawful Larceny" is a curious mixture of sentimental moralizing and very good fun turning on a quite impossible vamp, who steals the gold of fatuous, rich New York husbands and cheats at cards. It was played by the Frawley Company on Saturday.
There are three American husbands and a judge who is anxious to be a husband. Immediately his wife goes to visit her famuy in Califorma, husband number one collapses into the toils of the vamp, a person without any brains, although she relieves a circle of rich male friends of thousands and thousands of dollar's. The "lawful Jareeny" consists in the stealing of Marion Dorsey's husband (husband number one) from her. The unlawful larceny is the cheating of wives of the other husbands at cards. But the vamp makes a poor business of the first form of larceny, and is not much better at the second. Marion Dorsey, the wronged wife, triumphs over her, retrieving not only Mr. Dorsey, but snatching also the vamp's real passion, My. Guy Tarlow, together with the whole of the vamp's fortune.
Miss Adele Blood as Marion was appropriately sentimental. The dificult part of her husband was in the hands of Mr. Herbert Light, who gave a workmanlike performance. As the vamp, Miss Betty Barnicoat was really amusing, but she seemed much more a jolly woman of the world, exhibiting none of the insidious eroticism one might expect from such a creature jen the New York underworld.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.