THE PANTOMIME.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 304, 24 December 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE PANTOMIME.

A FEATURE OF CHRISTMAS IN

LONDON

TOLD BY SECOND FIDDLE

Now, hark ye! For what I can't tell ye about Christmas pantomimes isn't worth knowing. I've been in lots of 'em, and what's more, seen 'em. It isn't every oney who's in a show that sees it.* You can't see a show when you're behind the footlights —no more than a fighting soldier sees the battle. But I wasn't the ■Queen of the Stars,' nor the "Prince of the Moon.' I was just an humble second fiddler in the orchestra scraping out 'turn, turn, turn, turn,' or 'fiddle-de-dee,' and when that's all you have to do you can keep one eye all the time and both eyes part of the time on the stage. You can see the 'Queen of the Stars' twinkle and ythe 'Prince of the Moon' beam; likewise

all whom they twinkle or beam upon. So 'ting-aling-aling' up goes the curtain, and 'turn, turn, turn, —fiddle-dc-

dee,' here am I scraping away at my old fiddle.

Where are we? At Drury Lane, perhaps, with its years and years' prestige of Christmas pantomime? Well, the show at old Drtiry's sure to be good. Do you know what it costs to ring up the curtain on a big Christmas pantomime? Twenty thousand pounds! A YEAR'S PREPARATION. Let me tell you why. It took a year's work to ring up that curtain. Yes, the manager began last Christmas to get ready for this. While the pantomime shows are on at all the different places he goes dashing around from one theatre to another, from the West End to the East End, and from both to across the river and back again. He even haunts the music halls. He sees a man here, a woman there whose 'turn" seems to have caught the public's fancy. I'll have them in my pantomime next year,' he says to himself as he jots their names down in a notebook. Then he goes to engage them and finds they're already down in some other manager's notebook and, as a result, have got their ideas and their pay away up in 'G. He has to checkmate rival managers by loosening his purse-strings. That's bother number one. A nice salary list he has presented himself with for his next season's Christmas gift!

You might suppose he'd have first secured a piece from some author. But he doesn't even do that the next thing after engaging his 'people,' for when he's got his list of "specialties' he goes straight to the scene painter. He doesn't even tell him whom he has engaged, and of course he himself hasn't as yet the remotest idea what the piece is going to be. The great things in Christmas pantomime are the ballet-and transformation scenes, and if these are .thoroughly new, brilliant, and startling, the piece can take care of itself. So, if the scene painter can fill the bill with something original and startling the bargain's made. REACHING OUT. Then the manager begins to think of the piece. The author usually suggests some subject with which children are familiar—"Blue Beard,' 'Cinderella/ -Jack and the Beanstalk'— and outlines a scheme showing how the people, the ballet, and the transformation" scenes can be worked in.

Then comes the bother of choosing the ballet. The ballet master is told how many dancers are needed. Anywhere from three to five times as many as are needed apply. The weeding out process begins. The first to go are those who look old enough to have danced in the festival that was held in ancient Egypt to celebrate the laying of the corner stone of the pyramid of Cheops. Then those who came over with William the Conqueror are eliminated, and so on, and so on, until even the grandmothers of the present day have walked out of the stage door and a comparative youthful look has come over the army of applicants. Next the manager has to do a turn with the property master. The scene painter has furnished a list of subjects for the great ballet scene and with this list in hand the manager confronts the property master. 'How are you on caterpillars, bugs, and beetles?' 'We haven't much in the line of caterpillars,' answers the property master, 'but we're overrun with bugs, spiders, rats, mice, and other vermin.' As a result of the manager's consultation with the property master, the various pasteboard properties for the ballet are got underway. THE MUSICAL PORTION. By this time it has perhaps occurred to the manager that he needs some music for his pantomime. Off he goes to a composer and orders it —so many bars of 'tum-te-te-tum' and 'fiddle-de-dee,' like so many bars of soap, no matter what, so long as it ■will wash with the public. All is left to the composer with the proviso that the tunes will be catchy—no Beethoven or Wagner or dead march from •Saul,' but the kind of music that'll spread quickly. If it's the kind an audience will take up right at the first performance and sing along with the people on the stage so much the better. Meanwhile the sewing girls have gotten to work on the costumes and toward November things are about ready for rehearsal. Did I hear anyone say 'temper? No? Well, I've seen so much of it at pantomime rehearsals the mere mention of rehearsal must have produced something like an echo of it. I'm scraping at my fiddle again in the wings. I'm there for two purposes — to furnish the music for the ballet to march or dance to and to enable the ballet master to lay the blame on me for everything that goes wrong. He beats time, stamps with his foot, then runs his fingers through his hair and shakes his list at me. The chorus is rehearsing in the lobby. The music director is running about distracted from one part of the theatre to the other.

The leading lady is sitting in a box fanning and pouting. She has airs and a pug. Liveried servants are running in and out of the box with flowers, shawls, wraps, and the like. But she is annoyed because she has to wait so long before going on. Probably some swell friend of the managers has tipped him the wink that he will bear part of the expense of the show if he will' let her take the part. She is apt to be good looking and shapely, and not only willing but anxious "to have the lines of her role longer than the material for her costume. But she expects, because her swell 'steady' is putting up money for the show, to rule it. While she is making herself a thorn in the managers flesh the scene painter and gasman are quarrelling over

the moon—as to where, when, and how it should rise. The clown is growling because there are funny lines for others besides himself.

Meanwhile the stage carpenter has informed the author that he 'can't set that glowworm dell scene to a page of dialogue lasting only one minute and a-half.'

"Suppose I throw in a comic song,' suggests the author.

'I've just sung three,' the comedian shouts, "and I aiu't got more than two lungs!' By this time the growl has become so general as to drown individual discords. I can hardly hear my own fiddle and just leer at the ballet master every time he shakes his fist at me. The elves are trying to look airy in their clumsy rehearsal pantalettes: the,/ fairies, instead of making their exit toward fairyland, have marched off to the infernal regions; the stage manager is shoving back a super who believes he is a genius suppressed by fate, the electric moon falls with a crash, and the leading lady's 'steady' is threatening the manager to withdraw his subvention if she is made to wait any longer. 'BOXING NTGHT.' But at last the night set for the first performance. Boxing Night, arrives. As a rule, this is the great night for what they call in England the 'middle classes.' By one o'clock in the afternon the streets about the theatre are already crowded; and when, at three o'clock, the side doors at double prices are opened, there is a rush. But the real jam comes at night. It is so great that many people carry their sixpence for admission between their teeth. There's no half-price; even babies are charged the full admission. There have been instances of mothers, even in those great surging, crushing crowds, smuggling their babies in under their shawls. It's a good-tiatured, chaffing crowd, though, and. if the music's catchy, it will join in the choruses with a shout that makes the chandelier shake.

Things aren't so lovely, though, behind the scenes. "Props' are missing at the last moment or the transformation scene won't work and someone has to be sent on to gag [out the wait.

But it's ten to one the audience tumbles to it, and then there are shouts of 'Turn on your transformation!'

At last the show's over. There's another jam at the door. / The leading lady drives oft" with a prancing pair and a liveried groom and footman. Clown and pantaloon repair as usual to the nearest •public' to bemoan over their "two o' cold gin' the days of Grininldi, when Hie clown ruled the pantomime and it hadn't degenerated to a variety show. Stage manager and property master drink a mug to 'our' piece,' while the ballet master and your humble friend, the second fiddler, drown their enmity, which really never existed, in a pitcher of ' 'arf and 'arf.' If there's a good house the next night the show's caught/ on, and the manager has a fortune in sight. If not—pantomime spells bankruptcy.