MIMES AND MUSIC

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 89, 11 October 1913, Page 11

MIMES AND MUSIC

(By "Orpheus.") THE SHOWS. OPEEA HOUSE. J. C. Williamson, season closes Monday night. M'Kay's Royal Pantomime Company, 16th October. Genee, 27th October. "The Geisha," 22nd to 29th November. HIS MAJESTY'S. Brennan-Fuller Vaudeville. THE KING'S THEATEE. Pictures nightly. BTAR THEATRE. Star Picture Company. EMPRESS THEATRE. Continuous Pictures. THE NEW THEATRE. Continuous Pictures. SHORTT'S THEATRE. Continuous Pictures. PEOPLE'S PICTURE PALACE. Continuous Pictures. The Williamson firm's Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, now being got together in London and Australia, will appear first at the end of the year in Johannesburg. There are seventy vaudeville and picture houses in course of construction in Philadelphia. When completed the city will have 350 places of entertainment. Mr. Paul Dufault, of the . Nordica Concert Company, scored a tremendous ovation at the Theatre Eoyal in Christchurch, and was recalled even for a third time after one contribution. Was it a mere coincidence that the last two lines of the final encore included these poignant phrases : " And now I know what hell can be, for I can feel its pain" ? asks Christchurcb Star. Mr. Edward Lauri, the comedian, as joint manager of Pantomime Productions, Ltd., London, is now busy preparing for the autumn season. Mrs. Lauri (better known as Miss May Beatty) has been in indifferent health for some time, and will not reappear on the stage before the pantomime season, when she will play in " Eobin Hood " at the Grand, Glasgow, with Mr. Fred Kitchen. Anywhere where pantomime h announced to be staged the playgoer associates something quite out of the ordinary in the music, scenery, and dressing, beautiful girls, singers and dancers. Fulfilment of this is promised in the production next Thursday at the Opera House of "80-Peep" by M'Kay's Eoyal Pantomime Company, which is making its first tour of the Dominion. This company numbers fifty performers, all of them experienced artists in this special class of entertainment, and with the exception of several all making their first appearance here. The dancing alone will be a feature of the production, and some new and novel ballets will be introduced, notably the "Floral Ballet," in which each shapely participant rej presents some beautiful flower. The music has been specially written by Mr. Harry Taylor, who has had many years' successful experience' in this class of work. His music is of the "catchy" order, and' wherever it has been played it immediately earns the hall-mark of popularity. The songs are also from Mr. Harry Taylor's ' prolific pen, and the merit of all those sung in "80-Peep" is that they are not hackneyed. The principal boy (Miss Kathleen Mack), BoPeep (Miss EitaWebb), Miss Cora Terry and Miss Esme M'Lellan all have charming number^ allotted to them, whilst the principal comedians (Mr. Bruce DrysdaJe and Mr. Victor Loydall) are well supplied with songs winch lend themselves to topical illusions. The scenery is from the brush of Mr. Harry Whaite, and this artist has excelled himself in many magnificent , stage settings, including a gorgeous setting, "The Four Seasons," a transformation scene. Once a showman always a showman, says the Bulletin. So Michael Joseph, one of the best-known advance men in Australasia, who recently gave the hurried life a rest in favour of settled commercial work in Sydney, has gone back to the old trade. Anybody who wants to hear the latest boudoir anecdote will .find Michael in the managerial department of Clemena Mason and Scott, at Melbourne. Tiny Town opened its New Zealand tour at the Town Hall, Auckland, on Saturday last, and its midget inhabitants were warmly welcomed by old friends. In addition to the company that was seen here last year, there are now several others, including Diedrich Ulpts and the Franco Midgets, the latter, being two amazingly clever illusionists and conjurers. The Wellington season will take place about the middle of November, all the North Island towns being played on the way^down. "The Private Secretary," with which Wellington theatregoers will have a welcome opportunity of renewing acquaintance at the t Town Hall Concert Chamber on Wednesday next, bids fair to be interpreted by one of the strongest amateur casts that has appeared in Wellington in the last few years. To those who have not made "The Private Secretary's" . acquaintance, the clean fun which, permeates Charles Hawtrey's hilarious farcical comedy can be commended. The box plan, which is at the Dresden, is rapidly filling. Here is the full cast : — Mr. Marsland, Mr. G. T. P. Williams; Harry Marsland, Mr. Frank Eller; Mr. Cattermole, Dr. N. Hales j Douglas Cattermole, Mr. C. Bentley Eussell; Eev. Eobert Spalding, Mr. N. E. Aitken; Mr. Sydney Gibson, Mr. Peter Devereux; John, Mr. C. Pullyn; Knox, Mr. H. C. Grant; Edith Marsland, Miss Ruby Scott; Eva Webster, Miss Marie Fix; Mrs. Stead, Miss Ethel Lissack; Miss Ashford, Miss Iris Lennox. Mr. Charles F. Blake has been engaged to stage-manage the production. Mr. Charles *MacMahon, of MacMahoa Bros., theatrical entrepreneurs, hr« brought ' back with him from London 1 some striking dramas and picture plays. At present there is come uncertainty as to whether he will show them in Sydney ■or bring them across to New Zealand. "I've got them in my bag," said Mr MacMahon, to a Sydney pressman, "but I have not decided yet what I shall do with regard to staging and showing them. But I've bought outright four dramas, not picture dramas. Two of them, 'Lady Godiva,' and 'The Rich and Voor of London.',' are by Preston ; an- ■ *ther, 'From Mill Girl to Millionairess,' |is by Morton Powell ; the other is 'The Barrier'— all very powerful plays." The entire Genee Company, numbering ovbr 70 people, will come to New Zea-' 'and, and the entertainment will be presented on the same gorgeous scale as in Melbourne and Sydney, in which cities the season lasted for over six weeks. A full grand opera orchestra forms part of the organisation, and is under the direction of Maestro C. J. M. Glaser, who has been associated with Mdlle. Genee for many years. The stage manager is Mr. Frank Rigo, who acted in a similar capacity in Australia with the Madame Melba Grand Opera Company. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the attraction and the enormous expense entailed in transporting such a big organisation through the Dominion, the Williamson firm has decided to adhere to the ordinary prices of. admission. Animal impersonators are always a featuro of modern pantomime, and " Little 80-Peep " will be no exception to the rule. Mr. Stanley M'Kay, whose company is to present "80-Peep" at the Opera House next Thursday, has engaged a trio of ar Lists who make a juwqiality of this work. " Bell, Joy, and BiliU-ii ASA. -til* XXAXOA* aL-4iiA iSIO. A&d '

they also do a novel act, " Fun in the Demon's Haunt," in which they introduce their girade act. They are contortionists and legmania artists above the ordinary. Mr. Beaumont Smith returned from Australia by the Tahiti on Wednesday. Mr. Beaumont Smith is now Beaumont Smith, Ltd., in theatrical business. He controls " Tiny Town," the exclusive rights for Australasia of the kinematographic representation of " The Miracle," Professor Max Reinhardt's wordless mystery play, which was produced at Olympia, London, and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Also, in partnership with Mr. Louis Meyer, of the Strand Theatre, London, he brings a special London comedy company here next year to produce "The Glad Eye." Again in partnership with Mr. Meyer he will produce Rex Beach's great drama of Alaskan life, "The Barrier." This play is now being staged with great success in London, with Mathieson Lang and Harcourt Beatty in the cast. On the 21st of this month the American contingent for William Anderson's production of " The Land of Nod " will sail for Australia, arriving in Sydney on 10th November, and giving the opening performance on 26th December. For the production, which ran for six years in America, Don Mathews, the original conductor, has been engaged. Pearl Wilkinson is to be the producer, and the principal boy is to be taken either by Miss Ruth Nevin or Miss Jessie Overman. Ford West is to be the principal comedian. He is a member of a wellknown vaudeville team. Miss Birdie Starrett is to be the principal dancer, and Miss Maisie Boland, an English pantomime artist, is to be the ingenue. Miss Priscilla Verne will play the chorus girl, the chief low comedy role on the woman's side. "The Scarlet Band," one of the new plays just put on in London, is written of as a capital piece of melodrama. The band, it appears, is a gang of scoundrels in New York, and the play shows how they are brought to their doom by one Margaret Holt, who acts as a spy on the Scarlet Band, gains the secrets of its ruling spirit, and is forced to kill him to save her brother. One is hurried through the second and third acts breathless, to arrive panting, but happy, at the final curtain, which brings happiness for all except the Scarlet Band, and handcuffs for them. In the second act there is an emotional scene, where the girl is .engaged as a typist by an eccentric newspaper writer, whose hobby is the study "of crime. He is absorbed in a reconstruction of the murder, intended for serial publication in a New York paper. Like Sherlock Holmes, h,e has a great contempt for the police, and revels in the notion of finding the murderess, for he is convinced that a woman's hand has done the deed. How he stumbles, partly by intuition and partly by shrewd reasoning, on one fact after another; how the unhappy girl is forced to take down in shorthand what is really a very faithful, if a dramatically worded, account of the scene; how she breaks down again and again, but is saved by^he egoism of the old journalist, who purrs with satisfaction at the effect of his adjectives on the untrained intellect; how at last, by a flash of inspiration, he realises that the woman before him is the murderess — the revelation of all this is described as a great piece of stagecraft. The cinema, season at Home lasts practically all the year round, but it slackens off during August and part of September, and revives again as the days shorten. The season which is now in full swing will see the presentation of a number of notable films, among them "Ivanhoe," "The Battle of Water loo," "A Message from Mars," by Charles Hawtrey, "David Garrick," by Sir Charles Wyndham, "Hamlet," by Sir Johnstone Forbes-Eobertson, "A Cigar-ette-Maker's Romance," by Martin Harvey, and "Macbeth," by Arthur Bourchier and Violet Vanbrugh. But there are others beside these. The famous "Three Musketeers" has been secured for British audiences for the sum of £10,000. Bulwer Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii" will also be seen during the late autumn season. This production has cost £15,000 to film, and will probably outrival "Quo Vadis?" in popularity. ' Another rival war picture to "Waterloo" is also booked for England, "The Battle of Gettysburg," in which' five thousand United States troops took part, the picture costing £16,000. There is to be a. special re-issue of episodes in the life of Napoleon, also a stirring series embracing famous battles of Napoleon. "William ' Tell" and the days of Robin Hood are to come into being again, the stories being filmed in Kinemacolour. The life "and adventures of David Copperfield will be welcomed by every English-speaking person. "East Lynne," now being shown, will continue its successful tour of almost every town and city- in Great Britain. . Wilkie Collins's powerful tale, "The Dead Secret," and Tolstoy's story of Russian life, "The Living Corpse," will provide thrills and sensations in plenty. The death of Harry Gabriel Pelissier removes from the London stage one of its best-known and most popular figures. Pelissier was descended from one of the marshals of France, who bore the same name, but the entertainer was born" in Finchley, London. He was educated for a business career by his father, a diamond dealer, but he took to the stage early in life and secured his first engagement as an "early- turn' at the Mnrylebone Music Hall, a place of entertainment attached to a publichouse. His opening 60ng was " Mem Faderland," and Ms reception can be summed up in the one remark that was made by a member of the audience. " When are they going to burn yer?" He was a bigger success at his native town, where he appeared with a piano, and for some time he was in request at local pennyreadings. He invented V a patent bicycle which absorbed his savings, and he was compelled to join an obscure company of Pierrots known as "The Follies. "He contributed songs and composed many of the numbers. At that time he wrote "Awake," now well-known. The Follies were then practically nothing, but Pelissier's genius was the moving spirit of thto wonderfully popular company that later took London by storm. He it was who conceived the idea of reviving the spirit of burlesque, which was first demonstrated along ambitious lines in 1904, when he produced "Bill Bailey," a skit on the conventional Christmas pantomime, followed by a burlesque of "Hamlet." Twelve years befoi'b that The Follies had been performing at seaside piers, but in 1904 they were honoured by a " command " to appear at Sandringham before King Edward VII. In 1907 he produced "Baffles: a Peter-Pan-tomime at the Royalty Theatre, London. It was the first potted play. That year saw the company firmly established. Pelissier's style has been summed ap by Max Beerbohm as follows :— "He is a comedian of a really high order. He does not make fun, fun makes itself in him and bubbles gaily up and forth even when he is not doing anything in particular Pelissier's humour is preeminently one of curves. ... He has the good fortune to be a very large and rotund man. . . . His face is a mirror in which myriads of expressions, broad and subtle, are reflected in bewitching succession." Pelissier was a man of resource, and the stores of the methods employed by him to get out of the difficulties that beset producers at times are innumerable. His company, The Follies, may be termed the leaders of thh greai movement m costume comedy companies, but no organisation has enjoyed the bucce&s o£ tho devoted little band that worked with Pelissier an ths "*"*iHl MnA .giiiHinn. fcnlriiL