"I only hope the dear fellow does make it!"
"What does it matter if we do have to wait a bit—that's all we've really got to do, after all," answers an elderly man moving away.
"It would be worse than this if we were in the trenches," chimes in some one else.
"My son is in water up to his waist out there in Argonne," echoes a third, as the group disbands.
And yet people do go to the theatre.
Gemier has made triumphant productions, with the translations of the Shakesperean Society, and true artist that he is, has created sensational innovations by way of mise-en-scène in the "Merchant of Venice" and "Anthony and Cleopatra."
It's a far cry now to the once all too popular staging à la Munich.
Lamy and Le Gallo were excruciatingly funny in a farce called "My God-son," but the real type of theatrical performance which is unanimously popular, which will hold its own to the very end, is the Review.
How on earth the authors manage to scrape up enough comic subjects, when sadness is so generally prevalent, and how they succeed in making their public laugh spontaneously and heartily, without the slightest remorse or arrière pensée, has been a very interesting question to me.
Naturally, their field is limited, and there are certain subjects which are tabooed completely; so the trifling event, the ridiculous side of Parisian life, have come to the fore. Two special types, the slacker and the profiteer, or nouveau riche, are very generally and very thoroughly maltreated. If I am any judge, it is the embusqué, who is the special pet, and after him come the high cost of living, the lack of fuel, the obscurity of the streets, the length of women's skirts, etc.—all pretexts for more or less amusing topical songs.