People Who Don't Laugh: They Worry

Otago Witness, Volume 11, Issue 2280, 11 November 1897, Page 60

People Who Don't Laugh : They Worry

the Players.

"It isn't the inattentive people who gossip at the playthat worry the low comedian," remarked a well-known actor, " it's the people who don't laugh. I'm nob alluding to those who don't see the joke, but to those person* who have saen the piece oo often that they know all its jokes by hearb. " Certain London theatres, especially those devoted to musical pieces, have quite a large circle of regular habitues, rich young men, who drop in every nighfc during the second act to kill time. One young, banker's son books his stall by the month, and has seen this play over 100 time*. At first he used to laugh ; now, while the rest of the audience is convulsed with merriment, he and half a dozen male friends

sit in the front stalls and glare blankly. It's terribly disconcerting. Several times they've made me so nervous I've entirely forgotten my lines, and one of our leading ladies one evening burst into tears and had to leive the stage. - " In the pib, too, there are nearly » score of young fellows— city clerka— who come every Saturday and Monday, and they also have loug ceased to laugh. Why they coma I can't think, for they sit in the front row and read newspaperi and novels, and never look at the 'stage except while & dance is on. One youth recently wrote to the manager suggesting that, 'as they had all grown heartily sick of the piece,' ho should change it for a new one, ' or at least cut out all the jokes, songs, and dialogue, and only .have dances.'

" Another habitue, the younger son of a wellknown nobleman, used to sit night after night; in the same stage box and drive us actors nearly frantic. On. & 'first night,' if we hesitated, he would prompt; *us loudly with tbe wrong words, generally a passage from a former play. But when he grew familiar with the piece, his facefciousnesj bscame utterly maddening.

" One evening he completely demoralised the whole company by reciting in * distinct voice all the dialogue, j ..kes, and everything just a word or two ahead of the actor?. He got; all the laughs from the audience, and we got none. His money was refused after that, but as he several times booked the box under another name, we had some little trouble in getting rid of him." — Cassell's Saturday Journal.