ALEXANDER WATSON

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 38, 13 August 1921, Page 6

ALEXANDER WATSON

.. In hi Kipling evenings Alexander Watson is perhaps at his best; certainly last evening's audience ■at the Concert ( < Chamber most fully enjoyed the excellent entertainment ho offered; but, indeed, all hie audiences have enjoyed all Mb programmes. Kipling wrote in many moods\, though in all has lain his pride in the Empire, and the programnie was very/ happily arranged to show the poet in his many humours. "Boots," in which Kipling has portrayed the deadening monotony, the mechanical movement, the thirst and the dust clouds of an infantry desert march, was one ■of Mr. Watson's .greatest pieces of work: To-the eye the '. poem may bo accounted merely monoto- ) nous, but 1 to the car it is a. wonderful composition as treated by Mr. Watson. The adventures of Mulvaney, of ■. "Soldiers ■ Three," with "My Lord the Elephant," were excellently told in a delightful.rolling brogue, and other numbers included < a typical pride-of-Empire poem, ''The English Flag," "M'Andrew's Hymn," i "Oonte"—tho camel as seen by the man on active service, a beast to'be cursed at and yet to be relied upon—"The Married Man," .and tho "Ballad o£ the Bolivar." . This evening will be devoted for the most part to pxcerpte from Charles Dickens, including chapters from "A Christmas, Carol." "Pickwick Papers," and "Martin Chuzzlewit" . Mr. Watson will, also recite "The Highwayman" (Noyc6),' "Knittin' of the Stockin'" (Bellaw), and "The Rule of Three" (W W. Jacobs). On ■, Monday evening scenes from "Twelfth/ Night" will be offered, and throughout' ' next week some especially interesting programmes will be presented. -■' ■ .