THE BANNOCKBURN CONCERT.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 178, 8 April 1873, Page 5

THE BANNOCKBURN CONCERT.

A very numerous attendance gathered to witness the first of the series of entertainments proposed to he given during the Winter months under the supervision of the Bannockburn School Committee. We did not learn the amount realised, but probably the Committee will find themselves richer by £2O or so. _ The first part of the entertainment consisted almost entirely of songs : recitations and readings seem to find no attempters among Bannockburn performers. Except Mr Hurley's nigger-songs, none of the performances of the others can be said to be worthy of much praise. Mr Storey, Mr Perry, Mr Holly, Mr Simpson, Mr J. Smith, and Mr Gilchrist all sang fairly, and one cannot be said to have eclipsed the other. A gentleman who attempted to sing " Put me in my litLle Bed," concluded, when he reached "Put your head beneath your wing," that he could not do better than follow his own advice ; so, with a meek apology to the effect that he couldn't sing to-night, he quietly collapsed. Mrs Jackson had been advertised to sing, but was not present. A lady who was present was prevailed upon to fill her place in the programme ; but after several plucky trials, with and without the fiddle accompaniment according to her stated pleasure, she had to give her song up as a bad job. Mr Hurley sang, in quite a professional style, "Nobody's Child," and "The Big Sunflower," accompanied by dancing ; and in response to an encore demanded of the latter, he told the doleful history of " Tobias and Biancus." After the lapse of a few minutes, the Kawarau Nightingales took possession of the stage. The company consisted of Messrs Chadwick, Moore, and Simpson, of the Bannockburn Jawbreakers ; and Messrs Hurley, Holly, Gilchrist, and Kelly, of the Kawarau Nightingales. With practice, this would have proved a very effective band of minstrels ; but combined practice had been altogether awanting. However, with the exception that some of the jokes were rather too familiar to most of the audience, the performers succeeded admirably in affording amusement, and in keeping their hearers pretty continually in laughter. Some of Tambo's jokes, especially, were very well received. The songs were quite up to the usual amateur mark. That played-out farce, the "Four o'Clock Train," was afterwards gone through rather tamely in the presence of a few who are not yet sick of it. The dancing that followed was kept up for three or four hours by some thirty males and two females. Struggles for the possession of the fair demoiselles were the source of fun not included in the programme. It is pleasing to add that the fun did not include fighting, but that it was good-natured and of a pacific description.