A Variety Troupe Rolls Into Olympia, Log-Jam Scene and All
The Swedish-American comedy 'Yon Yonson' wins the house — and the paper can't stop describing its loudest, beefiest actress with a mixture of delight and disbelief.
Yon Yonson, the Swedish-American play, was well received last night. Pretty Annie Lewis and Gus Heege were the only actors in the company, although the boy, Master Frankie Jones, was excellent. Sudie Connolly, a noisy variety actress with a cracked voice and an arm like John L. Sullivan, pleased the noisy gallery. She was beef to the heels, danced like a jumping jack, went through a window and climbed a ladder like a real man. The log-jam scene didn't work smoothly. The play was a very lively one.
“She was beef to the heels, danced like a jumping jack, went through a window and climbed a ladder like a real man.”
Long before cinema or streaming, a traveling variety company rolling into a frontier capital was the night's entertainment — and the local reviewer's job was as much wisecrack as critique. The paper's delight in a performer who 'climbed a ladder like a real man' shows how fluid the era's stage gender-play could be, even when written up as a joke. Olympia still builds its evenings around whatever troupe or touring act lands in town.
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