"She visited the play and sincerely regretted it."
In other respects the theater is pure San Francisco Chinese. There is the orchestra, led by the man with the yard-wide cymbals, playing the leading part. There is the property man, always in evidence, who places a chair and says "This is a horse," or turns the chair around and calls it a mountain. And there is the female impersonator with deeply roughed cheeks, who is the pride and flower of histrionic art. Women are not allowed to walk the boards of the Chinese theater, but the male actor who best can mimic woman's tones and mincing airs is the Henry Irving. There is a whole chorus of these men-women in the Jackson Park theater—an all-star combination. As for the piece itself, they first play a little curtain-raiser of about two-months' duration and then the real play occupies the rest of the year. It will be all one to the American visitors, however, who enjoy the novelty, so that they are allowed to quit when they like. And there is no objection to that from the polite Chinamen in charge of the Jackson Park theater.
The Turkish theater is across the way and farther east than the Chinese. It is back from the beaten path and you might miss it—if you were deaf. Having ears to hear you will be apprised of its whereabouts at forty rods distance by the orchestra, which sits on the front steps and discourses horrors on a sort of flageolet and a bass drum. The orchestra plays only one tune and it plays that hard. When a respectable house has been gathered by these out-of-door allurements the curtain rises on a Turkish play. It is a sweet pastoral of a youth who is lovesick and cannot be cured by the doctor, by the soothsayer—by any one except his love, who comes in time, and there is a wedding.
When this play was ended, Fanny decided that she had seen enough of foreign theaters and declined to go further.
A Boston girl in spectacles sat near her through the Turkish play. She told Fanny that she and her mother had been venturesome enough to visit the other plays, and they sincerely regretted it. She found a mongrel horde of Turks, Arabs, Europeans, blacks, Greeks—everything applauding an interminable song, whose filthy motif it needs no knowledge of Arabic to discover. The singer was an Algerian woman, good enough looking, after the pasty style of oriental beauties, young, agile and mistress of the curious, droning guttural melody which constitutes oriental music. She plays her part with complete abandon, probably because she knows no better, and her audience applauds her wildly for the same reasons. The Boston girl said she had seen these same girls, or their professional sisters, in the Algerian theater. But their performance had been modified to suit the western taste. They sing and dance, but their songs and dances are nothing more dangerous than a languorous drone. But there are also some funny parts, according to the Algerian idea. They are played by a jet black Somauli woman who joins in the dance and a jet black Somauli boy in the orchestra who has a face of India rubber and a gift for "facial contortion" that would make the fortune of an American minstrel.
"FACIAL CONTORTION THAT WOULD MAKE THE FORTUNE OF AN AMERICAN MINSTREL."
A look at the outside of the Soudanese theater is enough for the ordinary curiosity-seeker. It is a little round hut of bark in a dark corner of the Egyptian enclosure. Mahomet Ali sits at the receipt of custom exchanging pleasantries with dusky flower girls whose home is by the orange market beyond the Kase el Nil, who know more French than English, and more deviltry than either; who sing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay," and know how to solicit backsheesh to perfection. The theatricals here are simplicity brought to perfection. It is said their language consists of only a hundred words. If you were to paint your face black, look wild-eyed, stiffen your hair in many strands, array yourself in a cotton garment that revealed more than it concealed, and then were to jump straight up and down to the music of a dolorous chant you would not be far astray. Add to this a whining and interminable appeal for backsheesh and you might be very near the mark indeed. But there is one Soudanese performance you could scarcely hope to equal, unless you were to learn some sort of devil's chant, gird your loins with a loose belt of shells and by rapid contortions of your body make these primitive cymbals accompany your chant. This is the star of the troupe.
Romantic people, who like to think of dancing as the poetry of motion, can get a liberal education in muscular poesy by making the rounds of the Midway Plaisance. They may see sonnets in double-shuffle metre, doggerels in hop-skip iambics, and ordinary newspaper "ponies" with the rhythm of the St. Vitus dance. Slices of pandemonium will be thrown in by the orchestras for the one price of admission, and if the visitor objects to taking his pandemonium on the installment plan, he may get it in job lots down at the Dahomeyan village.