AT THE PLAY.
"Puss in Boots."
If Messrs. Sims, Dix and Collins did in fact, as they claim, make the book of this year's pantomime at the Lane, Mr. George Graves gagged and bound it. This popular annual festival indeed tends to become more and more of a Graves solo (with of course the innumerable customary da capos) and a bright sketchy Evans obbligato. As a Grand Duchess and Duke respectively the genial twain present themselves. Mr. George Graves, in a flounced skirt of green tartan check, copper curls and mahogany features, is a delectable creation; says some strangely unlady-like things (as is expected of him); is still oddly preoccupied with "gear-boxes" and other anatomical detail; and generally indulges in a fine careless rapture of reminiscence and improvisation—zealously assisted by Mr. Will Evans' familiar tip-tilted nose and bland refusal to be perturbed by entirely unrehearsed effects and obviously irregular cues. A jovial and irreverent pair of potentates, crowned by public laughter.
There is, of course, a sort of background to all this audacious fooling, more definitely directed virginibus puerisque. The new principal boy, Mr. Eric Marshall, woos his princess with a romantic air and a mellow tenor, in which emotion somewhat overshadows tone. Miss Florence Smithson, an accepted Drury Lane favourite, looks very charming, makes love in pretty kitten wise and still indulges in those queer harmonics of hers—virtuosity rather than artistry, shall we call it?—but is altogether quite a nice princess of pantomime. Little Renée Mayer is the Puss. Nothing could well be daintier. But I hope she will let me tell her (in a whisper, so that the others won't hear), that she doesn't quite realise what a jolly part she has got. I would implore her to spend an hour or two at serious play with any decent young cat and study the grace and variety of its beautiful, imitable gestures. Then she will assuredly pounce on her magician turned mouse, and fawn on her master and friends, with a greater air of conviction. And she will mightily please all the other nice children in the house.
Of the great ensemble scenes unquestionably the finest was the Fairy Garden, with a quite beautiful back-cloth by R. McCleery and a bewildering (and, to tell truth, largely bewildered) bevy of butterflies, decked by Comelli, fluttering in a flowery pleasaunce. And there was also a clever variation on the now inevitable staircase motif as a finale. But the Harlequinade of happy memory has deplorably declined to something like a mere display of advertisements—a sad business.
"The Starlight Express."
It would be uncandid to pretend that Mr. Algernon Blackwood gets everything he has to say in The Starlight Express safely across the footlights—those fateful barriers that trap so many excellent intentions. But he so evidently has something to say, and the saying is so gallantly attempted, that he must emphatically be credited with something done—something rather well done really. The little play has beautiful moments—and that is to say a great deal.
Princess Rosabel ... Miss Florence Smithson
Florian ... Mr. Eric Marshall.
Princess Rosabel and Florian, a young man—though only a miller's son—of considerable polish, especially about the hair and feet.
This novelist turned playwright wishes to make you see that "the Earth's forgotten it's a Star." In plainer words he wants to present you with a cure for "wumbledness." People who look at the black side of things, who think chiefly of themselves—these are the wumbled. The cure is star-dust—which is sympathy. The treatment was discovered by the children of a poor author in a cheap Swiss pension and by "Cousinenry," a successful business man of a quite unusual sort. You have to get out into the cave where the starlight is stored, gather it—with the help of the Organ Grinder, who loves all children and sings his cheery way to the stars; and the Gardener, who makes good things grow and plucks up all weeds; and the Lamplighter, who lights up heads and hearts and stars impartially; and the Sweep, who sweeps away all blacks and blues over the edge of the world, and the Dustman, with his sack of Dream-dust that is Star-dust (or isn't it?), and so forth. Then you sprinkle the precious stuff on people, and they become miracles of content and unselfishness. (The fact that life isn't in the very least like that is a thing you have just got to make yourself forget for three hours or so.)
The author was well served by his associates. Sir Edward Elgar wove a delightfully patterned music of mysterious import through the queer tangle of the scenes and gave us an atmosphere loaded with the finest star-dust. Lighting and setting were admirably contrived; and the grouping of the little prologue scenes, where that kindly handsome giant of an organ-grinder (Mr. Charles Mott), with the superbly cut corduroys, sang so tunefully to as sweet a flock of little maids as one could wish to see, was particularly effective.
Of the players I would especially commend the delicately sensitive performance of Miss Mercia Cameron (a name and talent quite new to me) as Jane Anne, the chief opponent of wumbledom. She was, I think, responsible more than any other for getting some of the mystery of the authentic Black-woodcraft across to the audience. The jolly spontaneity of Ronald Hammond as young Bimbo was a pleasant thing, and Elise Hall, concealing less successfully her careful training in the part, prettily co-operated as his sister Monkey. The part of Daddy, the congested author who was either "going to light the world or burst," was in O. B. Clarence's clever sympathetic hands. Mr. Owen Roughwood gave you a sense of his belief in the efficacy of star-dust. On what a difficult rail our author was occasionally driving his express you may judge when he makes this excellent but not particularly fragile British type exclaim, "I am melting down in dew." The flippant hearer had always to be inhibiting irreverent speculations occasioned by such speeches.
I couldn't guess if the children in the audience liked it. I hope they didn't feel they had been spoofed, as Maeterlinck so basely spoofed them in The Blue Bird, by offering them a grown-ups' play "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." But the bigger children gave the piece a good welcome, and called and acclaimed the shrinking author. T.
"36 Magnificent, Acclimatised, Well-bred Dairy Cows, &c. Many of these were bred on the Premises, and others were purchased from a renowned Breeder of Friesland Cattle, and they need no comment from the Auctioneers, but will speak for themselves."
Natal Mercury.
Blowing their own horns, so to speak.
Irish Sergeant. "Keep yer head down there! Don't ye know that's the very place that Mike Rooney was shot through the fut?"