MIMES AND MUSIC

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 126, 29 May 1915, Page 11

MIMES AND MUSIC

(B7 "Orpheue.") THE SHOWS. GRAND OPERA HOUSE. "Otoderella" Pantomime, Bth June. TOWN HALL. (Concert Chamber.) "The Violete," in season. . HIS MAJESTY'S. Brennan-Fuller Vaudeville. THE RING'S THEATRE. Pictures nightly. STAR THEATRE. Picture* nightly. NRW THEATRE. Continuous Pictures. KMPRESS THEATRE. Continuous pictures. SHORTT'S THEATRE, ' Continuous Pictures. PEOPLE'S PICTURE PALACE. Continuous Pictures. BRITANNIA THEATRE. Continuous Pictures. OPERA HOUSE. Continuous Pictures. Mr. John Farrell is in Wellington to do the advance work for the "Cinderella" pantomime, which will open here or/ Bth June. Mr. C. Berkeley will probably ,be in charge of the show. Mr. Allen Doone will this evening conclude bis Sydney season with "Molly JBawn," one of the most popular of his numerous Irish play 3. The company then comes to New Zealand, an extensive tour of the principal towns having been booked. A slump in khaki songs is reported in the Old Country. A well-known song writer prophesied this long ago. "As a•matter of strict accuracy," he writes, "many 'tommies' now leave a music hall 'when 'the boys in red,' who've 'bravely "bled' sort of ballad comes along." "Strict accuracy" is good — it almost equals the "sure cert of the racecourse tipster. Phil Smith, who has been in vaudeville, has rejoined J. C Williamson, Ltd, for the production of "The .Marriage Market." Jack Ralston, who was with Anderson's "Sinbad the Sailor," will also be in the production,. Messrs. Bert Bailey and Julius Grant have taken a seven years' lease of the' King's Theatre in Melbourne, and immediately after the 'close- of the Sydney season will open it with "On Our Selection." The management have secured a number of good English and American * plays. Henri French, "the Intoxicated Genius," has finished his two years' engagement with the Brennan-Fuller management, and is now touring New Zealand with his own company. Mr. Ohas. R. Knight, after successfully piloting the Willoughby pantomime, •"The Babes in The Wood," through its New Zealand tour, returned to Sydney , headquarters early in the week. The company will disband when it returns to Sydney. The craze for new faces at the London and provincial music-halls has been a godtsend. to many Anstralian performers, •whoiare now in the Old Country. The fneb is. ( the war Jias kept Continental 'turns within their own rxn-ders, not that there' is 'any demand for their services, s,o.much as the fact tha-t the male prinripals in "double" or family acts are beating arms 6omewhere at the front. ' The theatrical papers give many names of entertainers well known in the Commonwealth. , An American journal records something novel in the appearance at the Orpheum, 'Frisco, of Jue Qnon Tai, a full-blooded - Chinese maiden of 19 years, the daughter of one of tho richest Chinamen on the Pa-cine Coasfc. Says the writer: "She possesses a wonderful singing voice, a mezzo-soprano of rich timbre, under perfppt control. Her act' Opens in full stage . with a Chinese garden set. She appears first -as a girl, in a gown that was imported for her by her wealthy father, and which took more than one year to complete. She changes to a mandarin' suit imd sings as a boy. This suit has been in her family for years, and represents , the fourth order of rank below that of ■the late Emperor. Both of the eongs in this set are Chinese versions of popu- ■ Jar American airs. She closes in 'one* •wUth a $lush drop and conventional evening gown. Her song» are all in English " The palatial new theatre in Brisbane, c"--t°d by Mr. Hugh D. JiVj'lntosh, was ru it>ii 1 last Saturday week by t,he Tivoli "Follies" and a complete vaudeville company. Entertainments were given both in the theatre and on the Tivoli roof garden^ the artists having tho unique experience of working two shows v, night in one building, before different audiences. Although the roof garden accommddated 1200 and the theatre proper close on 2000, hundreds had 'to be turned away disappointed. The roof garden theatre, which is the first of its kind in Australia, is going to fill a long-felt want in Brisbane. Inasmuch as the Tivoli Theatre is situated in' the heart of. the city, patrons of vaudeville will be enabled to enjoy a high-class ' entertainment in the summer months ■ under ideal climatic conditions. Furthermore, they will not have to walk as far sis they do now to the dress circle of the theatre below, a lift — which accommodates some fifty people — being provided by the enterprising management. Several gramophone companies in England have been visited by the Government with the object of* turning their 1 factories temporarily and in part to the uses of war. Their disc -making machinery seems to, be extremely suited , to th© manufacture of shells, and thus these firms are adding the making of munitions to their wonted trade. It is said that one firm is turning out about 3000 shells a day. It says much for the capacity for work that these firms do not show any great falling-off in the ' manufacture of talking machines afc the same time. For not only does the ordinary trade appear normal, but there has been a great increase in the output, owing to the enormous number of gramophones and discs sent out to cheer our men at the front. Thus the manufacturers have shown a pleasing versatility. They are at one and the same times (as the Musical News complacently remarks) "sending out machines to cheer the brains of Our soldier lads, and others to shatter those of our enemies. Which, when one comes to think of 'it, is just what is required in these terrible times." One Metcalfe, the dramatic critic of an American paper, has just emerged from a cyclonic controversy with various persons as to the probable early collnpse of the theatre as an entertainer. His final address to all and sundry was couched in these terms: — " Deep-hued pessimists connected with the business of entertaining the public predict that the theatre as we know it is doomed to virtual extinction. They point to the decline in the character of the pla-ys that are the only ones the public will patronise, and to the decadence in the art of acting. No wonder the theatre is inartistic. It only reflects, as it always lias done, the spirit of the times. Everything is growing to be superficial, even fionesty. Thoroughness and conscientiousness take too much time. Serious effort is distinctly unfashionable in this era of the shirk. That doesn't necessarily mean that the theatre is going to, disappear from the. surface of the earth. Cheer up, pessimists. There are* other generations coming along who Ttaven't seen eyery thing you have." A controversy h« been EEpceedingiin^

London concerning tho alleged loss of skill of the playwright. "On behalf of melodrama," Mr. Charles Hannan writes :—": — " Too much attention cannot possibly be drawn to a remark of Sir George Alexander in an interview in one of Sunday's journals. Sir George says : ' Personally, I feel that this cry against melodrama has caused some of our dramatists to be led into losing what I might call "grip" in play work.' It becomes hard on our. younger and coming men now who have been studying and growing up in the writing of weakly plotted plays to ask them to go back and study afresh that most .difficult of arts, strong plotting and writing, situation and construction. They aje trained or training in the wrong school if 'grip ' is to bo always absent from their work. So_ long_ as our coming, dramatists goo n being 'in the movement' (a phrase coined by the critics which no one but themselves seems to have understood) I fear the future will not promise well. I suggest that they leave ' the movement ' alone and get back, if they can. to oldfashioned and therefore generally condemned ' grip.' " " Rosy Rapture," a burlesque in seven scenes, produced at the Duke of York's Theatre on 22nd March, was the talk of the hour when the mail left, less for its intrinsic merit than because it was by Sir J. M. Barrie. The critics admit themselves bewildered by it. Was Barrie perpetrating an ordinary revue, with the usual number of clever bite and dull patches, or was he satirising revues in general as the acme of modern idiocy? In either case the author has missed tho humanity, the pathos, the tenderness* and the peculiar humour which have mad© his literary work famous. " Rosy Rapture " was written for Miss Gaby Deslys, a beauty from th© chorus, who leaves her husband, Lord Lil Langour (Mr. Jack Norworth), and her year-old baby, to return to the revue stage^ Sir Herbert Tree's " Copperfield" revival is burlesqued in a scene in^ which Dan'l Peggotty and Wilkins Micawber are perpetually falling into one another's parts; a typical Gaby Deslys danco,. the " Fox-trot, >r Ml of frenzied energy and tempestuous vitality ; a charming little scene between an English Tommy (Mr. Jack Norworth) and a little French girl (Miss Gaby Deslys), very delightfully played by both ; a tongue-twisting, song by Mr. Jack Norworth, " Which Switch "is the Switch, Miss, for Ipswich?" which he # sings with great success seated at the' telephone, and in which he persuades th© audienc©_ to join; a song and dance for Mr. Eric Lewis, "I'll Show You How to Danco th© Polka," given with polished humour by that accomplished actor. Barrie also dexterously employs the kinematograph at a point where Rosy at the Supper Club receives a note from Lord LQ : " Baby has gone away to think about her parents. It is snowing. Sh© is in her nightgown. Com© home. The "movies" then show the adventures with brigands of an adorable'infant in a taxi-perambulator in search of her mother to teach " how to be happy though at home " ; and the secret, which forms the seventh and last scene, is — to keep a beauty chorus in the house. In this way tedium is banished, and the hostess is escorted in to dinner with song and dance! Mdlle. Deslys was unanimously voted an immense success in the new piece.