“MIKADO” MELODIES

Evening Star, Issue 21934, 22 January 1935, Page 9

“MIKADO” MELODIES

NEW YORK SULLIVAN CRAZY WEARS’ OF JAZZ. NEW YORK, December 28. Jazz-weary Broadway, sated with its •songs about tbo moon, is bumming the tuneful melodies of Sullivan and giving the Savoy Opera Company the most sensational season of its career. Gilbert and Sullivan, the hit the present theatrical season in New York, have not been very popular in America for some years. But the D’Oyly Carte Company has staged a come-back which has been so successful that the songs are being “ plugged ” almost as much as the current jazz successes. The company first intended to hold a four weeks’ season. After the first night there was not a single ticket available for the entire month. Thirty or forty people were standing at every performance. 10,000 A WEEK. The season was prolonged another four weeks. But still the seats were bought as soon as they were offered, ft has now been extended for the third and last time. Nearly 10,000 people are crowding the theatre every week, and the most extraordinary scenes take place at the stage door after each performance.

The actors and actresses are serenaded by their audiences with the songs they sing on the stage. Women in evening dresses, school children, and tired business men stand in queues in the cold singing the lilting times. Every member of the company has a person fan mail of hundreds of letters a day, while not a single day passes without the entire cast being entertained at some function or other.