(This review was written especially for the Crime by Benvenuto Cellini, formerly of the Gadfly, and now with the Chicago Gat.)

Art is divided into three parts, gall, more gall, and wormwood. Among the early season distresses of the last type can be named the Histrionic Club's annual December production, "The Banana Comedy." True this is but a premature production staged by prematures. True Cattle Hall lacks the proper acoustics. Yet there can be no excuse for robbing Filbert Soldhis of his gall for the annual wormwood of the Histrionic Society.

(To be Continued.)

As we were saying until so suddenly interrupted by the fall of Rome, New York as painted by the best exponent of the modern school, Truthan Consequences, who can be seen hanging by the neck until dead, or Georgia Spirituals, the "Banana Comedy" lacks that essence of quintessence necessary for any successful dramatic representation--sex. Who can see sex in a banana. No one. It is impossible. As Mr. Shubert said when I talked with him between the acts, "I have a quart."

The "Banana Comedy", as is well known and therefore bears repeating, is a comedy about bananas. With the singular grace peculiarly his own, Mr. Soldhis has contrived from the fruitful exploits of Joe Banana a long, unwieldy and often humorous farce in five acts and a pair of warm winter woolens.

Deftly, even dumbly, lie has poised on the cliff of fancy the future of the United Fruit Company. And how well Miss Fyre from the School of Dramatics While you Wait read her correspondence. To say that these schools like the great Sears. Roebuck cannot breen genius is to verge on the truth. And imagine verging on the truth. In fact imagine verging anyway. Miss Fvre sees Etta Banana's tragedy and shuts her eyes. I remembered, as I saw her, that famous evening when the great and only Eddie Foy, his family and I filled the old Madison Square Garden watching Duse play little Eva in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Miss Frye has the same elan, the some esprit, the same biceps.

Yet it remained for a son of my own college to take the palms, two Morris chairs, and the family silver. He was more than good: he was better. Although his diction shows contact with chronic dyspepsia, his range is excellent. In truth when he eclipsed high C. I. was ready to compare him with the Romanticists of the Early Pleistocene. Nor does he lack gesture. He should illustrate for Milt Gross. His name? I think it is Sheridan. And like his great namesake he has rivals.

For the chorus really do shine. In that famous scene once used by Ed Wynne where Etta Banana and Joe Banana split, each to go his way down the slippery path of life, the tragedy would be altogether too near the heart of the city to be called a suburb, were if not for the fact that this hand picked chorus from the far side of the Sahara proved conclusively that when art reaches pedal extremities it is not footless. In fact one would do well to spend an evening, two dollars and a half, and three quarters of a tumbler full of energy at Cattle Hall watching the annual December destruction of the Histrionic Club. As the old sea dog said when his child was born. "It's a wow."