"Topsy and Eva," with Duncan Sisters, Brings Crop of Pacific Coast Beauties.

  Just the girls in "Topsy and Eva," the chorus girls alone, ought to ensure the Selwyn a howling success for they eclipse the whole parade of beauty, making the brand new year glitter with lovely women challenging each other from the four corners of the loop shows.

  They are Mr. Wilkes' choice and Thomas Wilkes has the call on all the beauty marts of California, so that means the pick of creamy loveliness on the world's top wave of youth and beauty.

  There are eight exquisite youngsters not out of their teens as haughty and graceful and well trained as the intriguing sirens of Broadway are when they are 40 and desirable. There is Harriet Hoctor, a lovely creature, light as a waving fern and graceful as a veil of lace, and there is Mayme Gehrue, who is a stampede in old-time clog, heel-and-toe dancing, buck and wing and the things almost forgotten. Besides Miss Gehrue has a voice, or had in California, where the show grew and she can act and smile rakishly enough to coax.

  Mr. Ziegfeld's figurante, Allyn King, was to play one of the parts for Nana Bryan following the Duncan girls out west when those clever stars left the show to the pretty arts of a couple of coast girls named White—a pair of twins very chic and childlike and pretty. But Miss Bryan and not Miss King appears at the Selwyn and she is so charming, so natural and so valuable the company is to be congratulated. All these dazzling girls come from the annual crop of graduates from the Wilkes academy in Los Angeles, where Mrs. Wilkes and Thomas seize upon feminine loveliness and talent when it is fresh and exuberant for their stock theater and bestow their training and encouragement where it is immediate in result. If he has any more such bumber crops of pulchritude ready to harvest, he might as well send them on as a whole lot of statuesque regulars might be retired with honors to make way for such pretty creatures as the Wilkes' "old fashioned girls," the graceful singers who wear the early Victorian and Beau Brummel boy's clothes and the irresistible bridesmaids.

Duncan's Chief Entertainers.

  Miss Rosette and her sister Vivian Duncan are bright entertainers; especially Miss Rosette is amusing as Topsy. They do their usual amount of child-like clowning and Vivian can hardly be tied down to the infant class with her present stretch and muscle of limb and weariness of voice. She's a pretty young woman, however, and works smilingly and vivaciously with her more versatile sister, Rose. Rosette Duncan is an arch low comedian of an unusual force and exuberance. The merry twain expect loud and vociferous appreciation of their favorite bid for laughs which consist of that which is technically known as kicking each other in the pants. Maybe any amount of this is exhilarating to see. I do not know but it seems to be the height of uproarious adventure, according to the laughter and even applause always showered on any comics who execute the feat with aplomb.

  Mrs. Cushing, who can be depended upon to scramble any known plot beyond recognition, has done more to Harriet Beecher Stowe than the fifteenth amendment did to the cotton industry. She has taken some of the prettiest scenery ever given a pretty musical comedy and pulled old Uncle Tom, prayers, hymn, hallelujahs and all, right down into the jazz muss and let him talk himself to glory, with pauses to let the Duncan Topsy swear, blaspheme and otherwise delight the gayly callous and blunt. It was rather dreadful; but even a burlesque appeal to the Divinity to perform a miracle was taken as a huge and hilarious joke, so what's the use of being fussy about religious prejudices or forbidden ribaldry when the need of comedy is among [life's?] immediate tortures.

  For fifty-odd years we have been submitting Mrs. Stowe's melodramatic classic to orgies of mutilation. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was imperishable and it was done finally with double Evas and pairs of Topsys and bunches of Marks and droves of mules and dogs, to say nothing of husky platoons of Simon Legrees and blacksnake whips, and all the inquisitoria of drama dying hard. But it took Catherine Chisholm Cushing to give it a dig in the ribs which may lay its ghost.

Merit and Picturesqueness.

  Some of the roles were given genuine merit and all of them picturesque seriousness and prettiness. It was somewhat of a puzzle to find that Uncle Tom, decrepit and full of years, could sing like Edouard de Reszke in his prime. Also it was intriguing to note that Chloe and Tom had a family which ought to have gone to a museum since it was made up of seven or eight girls all one age and one size who did the same things at the same time as chorus girls will. Tom's pickaninnies sing very well too and dance and romp in piquant exactness. Basil Ruysdael played Tom excellently, Wilbur Cushman, a good looking gentleman, and Frederic Santley frivoled melodiouslyas southern aristocrats able to own slaves and slur their r's. Nobody but Mr. Cushman seemed to have the vaguest idea of speaking the sweet southern patois we all love so much, not even the blacks.