AMUSEMENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 253, 23 October 1905, Page 5

AMUSEMENTS.

OPERA HOUSE. TWO NEW AETISTSj Cleopatra and Bonita are the two new star attractions at Messrs. Fuller's house, and both are decidedly above the average in novelty and interest. Cleopatra is the name of a &dy snakecharmer of much enterprise who handles the most fearsome reptiles with; jt familiarity whicfi would make the spectator's blood run cold if he did not assume that the performer was riot bent upon a singularly unattractive form of felo-de-se. Some sort of entente eordiale apparently subsists between the lady and her tortuous pets, and they really don't seem much to mind being twisted like cords,- or thrown on the floor, or i otherwise treated with what looks' like a dangerous degree of disrespect. The "Star" representative having made but few and safe excursions into the study of reptiles can merely quote from the programme the names of the- slipperysinuous playmates of the courageous' Cleopatra. They are, then, "giant anacondas, African pythons, Australian snakes, boa constrictors, and man-eating alligators and crocodiles." The list sounds formidable, but so were the originals. Xo teetotaller ever saw such a vision before; and when their mistress holds the slimy headSof the creatures within an inch of two of her face, the casual beholder might Very well question his own compos mentis. Bonita a truly marvellous rifle and pistol shot, jis a mere child with a winsome manner and an eye that a Bisley •competitor might look at with envy. She shoots m the strangest postures at things that short-sighted people could hardly see, and misses not once in' twenty times She knocke the bowl off a clay pipe in* the hand of the unflinching Carlos, she smashes small moving objects as few people could do if they were still, and she aim 3 with certainty by looking in a mirror that 3 itself almost invisible Finally, she picks out Her name on a* board of small plaster discs with a Winchester repeater in tihe space of about twenty minutes. Bonita and Cleopatra are a host in themselves, but lest anyone should want more there is still the pyrotechnic Prince Olrae with bJ3 dra-gon-like exhalations of fire, serio and comic singers, arid the Scott-Beresford act. But the two new performers are certain of themselves to prove an uriine-" diaie "draw."