In One

Brought into sharp relief, not overshadowed, by her father, Cornelia Otis Skinner has for some seasons past been experimenting in monolog. Last year she threaded together five pieces titled Wives of Henry VIII. This year the Skinner offering "in one" has more continuity, is even more successful. Last week Manhattan saw her Empress Eugenie for the first time.

Monologist Skinner begins her outline of the Empress' life in 1853. Riding in the Bois de Boulogne she falls from her horse. A member of the British Embassy comes to her rescue. They chat about her coming marriage to Napoleon III. She remarks that "if I wear fashionable frocks and lay wreaths on the statues of their generals they [the French] will receive me with enthusiasm." Next scene, five years later, finds the Empress chatting with another Englishman, Lord Palmerston, while preoccupied with her husband's latest affair and the future of her son. Through Sudan and her flight from Paris ("The French never forgive their queens for being foreign!") the one-woman play reaches a notable climax at Chiselhurst in 1879. Queen Victoria calls to console a tight-faced, desperate woman upon the death of her son in the Sudan campaign. Bereft of throne, husband and heir, old Eugenie makes her last appearance in her suite at the Continental in Paris. Gradually her English has perfected itself. To a youthful U. S. visitor the defeated old lady cackles about the dead glories of the Bonapartes while the world is being remade under her thin, fine nose. The next year, 1920, unhappy Eugenie went back to Spain to die in the home of her fathers.

Miss Skinner's repertoire includes such old favorites as "A Southern Girl in the Sistine Chapel" and "Motoring in the '905." They amuse, serve as a measure of how far her work has progressed since she first presented them. Wives of Henry VIII alternates as the main piece on her program.

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