ENTERTAINMENTS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 29 September 1927, Page 9

ENTERTAINMENTS

CARTER THE GREAT EXPLAINS “THE TAPPING HAND.” “From time immemorial” says Carter the Great, who appears at the Municipal Theatre Hastings to-night (Thursday), “conjuring has haa her favourite conjurer—conjurers, each his favourite trick. A favoured trick, or a favourite trick should Be the one which has embraced the widest scope conjoined to the greatest effort toward success in its presentation and exploitation. Perseverance is usuallycrowned with success, but, herculean endeavours with respect to achievement in the realms of magic oftentimes meet with stolid unappreciation and many disquieting rebuffs. Therefore I have always thought that the hardest trick to accomplish should be the favourite one: this nas been an axiom with me since I began climbing the devious, lonely and stony heights whereupon the air is cool and the view to the valleys beneath kaliedoscopic and murky. Once in the beginning of my guileless novitiate away off somewnere in the long ago of silly youth, when the jack o’ lantern of hey-day dreams beckoned me on to greater illusions, Charlie Schilling nearly wrecked by puerile ami tion to dare and do, by brusquely tellling me that my favourite trick of the 'Tapping Hand’ was unworthy of my repertoire and icily bade me elimm ate it from my programme. This came as a great blow to my hopes. I thought then that the ‘Tapping Hand’ was a good trick, and I have since made a goodly part of the world coincide with my poor opinion. It was my favourite trick then because my horizon encompassed fifteen minutes of questionable progress; It has since been one of my favourite tricks as my horizon has widened considerably and the rapping hand is so sigmfl cant of a magician’s because of the dire necessity of his having to rapp away incessantly at his destiny to succeed and of the close resemblance it bears to a not too unprevalent though obvious propensity of divers of the craft mystique. But the ‘Tapping Hand’ is not now my favourite trick; my favourite trick to-day is still the hardest trick to do; one which most magicians essay but few accomplish. That is: the changing of an empty theatre into a crowded bouse of pleased spectators and a de pleted box office treasury into overflowing coffers of glittering, glinting glistering gold coin—the kind that magicians do not usually catch in the air! ” ,