Indian Servant (as telephone continues ringing). "Oh, Sar, do not be so angry. The Sahib is coming very quickly, I tell you."
THE ARRIVAL OF THE MANX BALLET.
The first visit of the Manx Ballet to London is undoubtedly the most outstanding feature in the annals of choregraphic and corybantic realism since the historic première of the Botocudo Troupe on September 31st, 1919. And it is all the more welcome as an indication of the emergence of a native school, fully equipped in technique and scenic resource and, above all, imbued from start to finish with a high sense of the paramount importance of psycho-analysis in eliminating all supra-liminal elements from the orchestro-mimetic drama.
The most ambitious as well as the most successful item in the programme presented on Saturday night at the Colossodrome was The Cat of Ballasalla, that wonderful old Manx legend of the Princess who was turned into a cat by the enchantments of the Wizard of Dhoon and subsequently sentenced to decaudation by the cruel Scandinavian invader, Magnus Barfod. The scene of the trial in the great synclinorium of Greeba Castle—exhibiting contemporaneous carboniferous tuffs, soft argillaceous rocks with choriambic fossils as well as later dolerite dykes, amid which the feline amenities of the Princess were illustrated with miraculous agility by Miss Agneesh Crannoge—compares favourably with the most ambitious enormities ever perpetrated by the genius of Bakst, Diaghilev, or even Cocodrillo, the Sardinian neo-Gongorist.
The music, which is chiefly founded on Manx folk-songs, developed and adapted by Mr. Orry Poolvash, is richly suggestive of the psycho-analytic basic aroma which pervades the entire scenario. The absence of a Coda in the Funeral March which concludes the ballet is an exquisitely pathetic touch which could only have occurred to a composer of genius. The orchestration is sumptuous and sonorous, the usual instruments being supplemented by two Glory Quayle-horns, a quartet of Laxey-phones with rotating C and C sharp crooks, a Manx harp with three strings, and a Miaowola, which gives out the Death Motive of the Princess at the various crises of the drama in tones of sublimated anguish and intensity.
We have only space in this brief preliminary notice to remark that the programme includes a humorous extravaganza entitled The Quirks of Quilliam, in which a grotesque pas de quatre for the Deemster, the Doomster, the Boomster and the Scrabster, forms the central episode; and ends with a satiric sketch, The Golden Calf of Man, apparently aimed at the extravagance of Lancashire trippers, who are pursued by demons into Sulby Glen, and released, to the sound of sea-trumpets, by the beneficent intervention of Lord Greeba on their promising to evacuate the island.
GOLFING "IFS."
If you bring your own lunch