AT THE PLAY.
"Cinderella."
A HORSE-SENSE OF HUMOUR.
| Pipchin | Mr. Stanley Lupino. |
| Baroness Beauxchamps | Mr. Will Evans. |
It is a very delicate task that the annual pantomime imposes upon Mr. Arthur Collins. He has to "surpass himself," but he must not do it once for all or he would rob the critics of their most cherished phrase. He reminds me of the constructors of our Atlantic "greyhounds," each longer by a yard or two than the last, each swifter by a fraction of a knot, each with a few more tons displacement, all pronounced to be the final word in scientific invention, yet all reserving something for the next time.
Certainly the present year marks an advance in one respect at least—that the grotesque and the beautiful are kept reasonably apart; the lovely colour-scheme, for instance, of the garden in Fairyland is undisturbed by any element of buffoonery. There was a revival too of topical allusiveness after the reticence proper to war-time; and the Geddes family must be justifiably flattered by their admission to a choric refrain.
The humour, of which Mr. Stanley Lupino bore the brunt, was here and there a little thin, and it is time that somebody let the Management of Drury Lane into the open secret that the pun, as an instrument of mirth, has long been a portion of the dreadful past. Mr.Will Evans, as the Baroness Beauxchamps, seldom let himself go, being no doubt held in restraint by a consciousness of his resemblance to Miss Ellen Terry. Not enough chance was given to Miss Lily Long (the Elder Sister), who has a very nice sense of fun. As for Mr. Claff, who played the operatic Baron, his most humorous moment was when he meant to be most serious. This was in a song in praise of Prince Charming, "featuring" H.R.H. in a portrait curiously unlike the original.
The two most effective incidents were borrowed from the Circus and the Halls. Mr. Du Calion, who had no other very obvious claims to play the part of a humorous courtier, did his famous ladder-feat—a perfectly gratuitous performance, for, though he was supposed to be rescuing Cinderella through a top-storey window, she had the good sense to descend by the staircase, having ignored, as is the way of Love, the locked door that made this impossible.
The other imported business was the work of a black horse, who preserved an expression of extreme gravity and detached boredom during the play of human wit around his person, dissimulating his own superior gifts of humour until called upon to illustrate them with some excellent circus-tricks.
On the sentimental side, Miss Marie Blanche, obedient to the inexorable tradition that a young hero of pantomime must be a woman, played Prince Charming with the right manners that makyth man; and as Cinderella Miss Florence Smithson once more breathed that air of innocence which still remains unstaled by years of steady addiction to the heroine habit. Her vocal intrusions, always well received, were not always well timed; certainly it was an error of judgment to insert a solo at the cross-roads after she had told us that she hadn't a moment to spare if she was to get home from the ball before the rest of the family. But here again it was a matter of obedience to some unwritten and inscrutable law of pantomime which it is not for us, the profane, to question.
And in this spirit I tender a grateful acknowledgment not only of the good things that my intelligence could appreciate in this lavish entertainment, but also of the other things that I can never hope to understand.
O. S.
Commercial Candour.
"Good Boots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25/-
No Better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37/6."
Speaker (endeavouring to cultivate a patriotic spirit in the young). "And now, children, if you saw our glorious flag waving triumphantly over the battle-field, what would you think? (Prolonged pause) Come, come, what would you —— Well, my little man, what would you think?"
Small Boy. "Please, Zur, the wind were blowin'."