ANIMAL ACTORS

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 March 1933, Page 10

ANIMAL ACTORS

‘THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

Melodrama, now never seen in New Zealand, had a healthy existence here until quite recently—even in the early years of this century—and there are many New Zealanders who cherish the Eland Holt tradition, just as there are many sworn champions of the still more recent vaudeville. In New Zealand the villain of the piece has been “rhe silver sheer." before which have fallen all the great stock companies and review companies of bygone years. When Walter Bentley 'was Silver- Kinging it up and down New Zealand and the six States (then separate colonies) no one dreamed that all the great heroes and villains of melodrama, from Bentleyism to Holtism, would receive the knife from something so unsubstantial as a roll of film.

The realism represented by a whole heap of melodrama properties —some of which could not get into rural theatres —was remarkable, but it -was nothing to the realism of the London melodrama of a hundred years ago. Perhaps few people realise that melodrama was an advanced science before Queen Victoria came to the throne. But a writer (Mr. St. Claire Byrne) in “The Listener” tells how they did it in the London theatres in 1832. the year that Byron’s “Mazeppa” was staged at Astley’s, with wolves and vulture complete. “The wild horse, with a gentleman in skin-tight fleshings, lashed to his back, arrived on the stage, accompanied by a terrific storm of thunder, lightning, hail, and rain. He wandered about, to appropriate music, till the sun rose; then, with a moving panorama of the course of the River Dneiper as a back-ground, he waded upstream. Wolves pursued along the farther bank. Finally, to more music, an enormous vulture hovered over the victim, until the herse, acording to the stage direction, ‘disappeared in the extensive distance.’ ”

Astley’s was, indeed, a “combination of a theatre and a circus”; horses and animals were star performers. In lhe thirties the manager was Alex. Ducrow, “one of the finest horsemen the ring itas ever known . . Duerow’s recipe for handling an author’s script was ‘cut the cackle and come ,to the ’osses.’” Many people really went to theatres to see animals as much as to hear men and women. At the. Coburg, in “Hyder Ali or the Lions of Mysore,” the real heroes were the performing lions of a certain Monsieur Martin, which were engaged at what the bills describe as “Immense Expense.” The shadow of the lions was over the whole performance. It was also over any other performance that was in hand on the same night. A “Taller” critic, who went especially to admire a promising actor’s performance in “Othello” complained bitterly that during some of the most absorbing scenes the lions were “in a constant state of disaffection and growl, which resounded throughout the theatre!” How could lie expect them to tolerate a rival inferior show, and to endure the “cackle” of Shakespeare? In September, 1832, Astley’s revived “The Invasion of Russia,” and advertised “the highly and often applauded

view of the City of Moscow in flames,” with “Perishing Soldiery amidst the Mountains in a Dreadful Snowstorm.” Was it a better snowstorm than some of those Arctic blizzards made in Hollywood? IMAGINE IMOGINE! A feature <tl. the Cobury was “Alonzo the Brave and the fair Imoginc, or The Spectre Bude." Imogine died, and Alonzo found another love, but Imogine “refused to allow a living rival to succeed her. The result, was. that at the nuptial benediction of Alonzo and the Princess Idelfonza, the audience was treated to this spectacle— ‘as the last stroke of twelve strikes, the spectral form of Imogine, enveloped in a luminous vapour, appears at the head of the staircase.’ She then leads Alonzo to a spacious vault beneath the castle, where twelve figures, enveloped in black mantles and hoods, are sitting at a table. ‘Pledge him, ye gallant comrades!’ erics Imogine, ‘and you, drink deep. Alonzo —’1 is the blood of Imogine!’ Upon which, according to the stagedirection, ‘the Figures cast back their mantles and display the forms of Skeletons! Each holds in his left hand a goblet, and in the right a dagger—a strong red light ill is the back of the cavern.’ Even this, however, pales before the last scene in which Alonzo dies in the cemetery, held fast in tmogine’s embrace, while ‘the adjacent graves open and Skeletons, partially clothed in grave-clothes, raise their heads, as if gaping to view the passing scene.’ The last, direction is ‘Alonzo sinks through a trap,’ enveloped in a ‘powerful red glare’; the tomb of the Spectre Bride ‘assumes the appearance of an aerial car. in which Imogine ascends, surrounded with a blue vapour. The spectres below group, and the Curtain falls.’ ” The old playbills are a literature in themselves. The following titles sufficiently indicate what people in London were getting for undepreciated sterling eight years before the founding of New Zealand: “The Death Light,” “The French Spy.” “The Bleeding Nun”, “The Murders of Grenoble.”