n a "mad moment" (Aha!) becomes the beloved of a certain fascinating
Max, a young and handsome ne'er-do-well. To add to the piquancy of the
situation, the baroness, a beautiful woman, and not, like her friend,
the mother of children, is entangled in the same net; she, too, adores
Max the heart crusher, though she will not cross the Rubicon for his
silly sake. The usual "triangle" becomes star-shaped, for a new
feminine presence appears, a girl who is matched to marry the fatal
Max. That makes five live wires; two husbands, two wives, a naive
virgin, with Max as inaccessible as a star. But after a capital
exposition, Sudermann gets us in a terrible state of mind by making
the lady with the good reputation go off in a hysterical crisis, and
almost confess to her stiff, severe husband--who is a maniac on the
subject of his house being above suspicion. The charming, reckless
baroness intervenes at the crucial point, becomes a lightning-rod that
draws the electric current, and pretends to be the real culprit. Her
husband, a sinister baron and ex-lieutenant in the Hussars, is
present. A duel with Max is the result. In the last act, after she has
been subjected to all kinds of ignominy, Baroness Dorrit von Tanna,
without confessing, is socially rehabilitated. Skim-milk in this
instance has passed for cream, the prudish millionaire's wife, her
honour saved for the world at large, is now revealed as a hypocrite to
her astounded and snobbish husband. The curtain falls on a maze of
improbabilities, with the baroness in the centre.

For people who don't take their theatre seriously, _i. e._, neither as
a fencing ground for propagandists nor for puling poets, this new
Sudermann piece will please. It has triumphed in Berlin and Munich.
Its people are portraits taken from fashionable West End Berlin, while
the dialogue, witty, incisive, and also characteristic, is one of the
consolations of a play that does not for a moment produce any
illusion. There are plenty of striking episodes, but logic is lacking,
not only the logic of life, but the logic of the theatre. No living
playwright knows better how to arouse suspense than Sudermann, and he
can't make us believe in his false theme, consequently his motivation
in the last two acts is false and disappointing. But there is the old
Sudermann pyrotechnical virtuosity, the fireworks dazzle with their
brilliancy, and you think of Paris, and also that some drama may be
divorced from life and