PAGEANTS IN BRITAIN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21521, 19 June 1933, Page 6

PAGEANTS IN BRITAIN

NAVAL AND MILITARY DISPLAY AT GREENWICH 1 FAMOUS FIGURES OF THE PAST [from oijb own correspondent] LONDON, May 12 Greenwich, is anticipating with pleasure the staging of what will be one of the most elaborate pageants to be produced in the London area for many years. It will last from June 16 to June 24. Mr. Arthur Bryant, the author of the ~ Night Pageant," as it is known, is also producing it. Dr. Malcolm Sargent will direct the music, and Mr. Henry Ainley will act as announcer. Vice-Admiral B. Domvile, president of tho Royal Naral College at Greenwich, conceived the idea when be was in the Mediterranean eighteen months ago. On a night in June, says the Morning Post, the coach of Queen Elizabeth will rumble through the grounds of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich; Drake, Charles the Second, General Wolfe, and other famous figures of the past will walk again; pikemen will parade, drums will roll, and coloured searchlights flash. The pageant takes two hours to perform. It begins at dusk. From ten to midnight, 2500 players, aided by coloured searchlights and "silhouettes"^ —some of the lighting effects have been used before only by Reinhardt —will represent scenes from Greenwich and naval history, from the christening of Elizabeth, the 400 th anniversary of whose birth takes place this year, to a glimpse into the future. The Golden Hind will return; Charles the Second will ascend the throne: the spectators will see the victory of "Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, and the funeral cortege of Nelson. Drums at Nelson's Funeral Tables in the workrooms are 6trewn with the hats of Restoration orangegirls, and the walls lined with bunches of home-inade muskets, pikes, decorative swords, and other weapons of every type. Old bag-handles have become excellent sword-hilts; the most decorative hilt of all is a disused gasbracket; four miles of hessian hare been dyed in what was a chauffeur's bath; and. one room contains some admirable, but unplayable, reproductions of old musical instruments. The Navy, the Army, the "Old Contemptibles," people of all ranks, professions and trades are taking part. Drums will beat which have not sounded since Nelson's funeral, and the lighting effects, for which a huge screen is in course of erection at the far end of the "stage," promise to be startling. The Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, members of the Cabinet, and the Lord Mayor of London will all attend during the run of the pageant, and, on one night, the Cabinet is to come down the Thames to dine in the Painted Hall of the College. Work began as far back as last September, for all the properties and costumesthere are thousands of them—are being made by voluntary labour. The effort is on behalf of Naval and Greenwich Hospitals. Royal Tournament A new feature at the Royal Tournament at Olympia from May 25 to June 10 will be a cavalcade of military transport throughout the ages. This display will be given by the Royal Arra.r Service Corps, and will begin with the primitive methods of moving an army's supplies and end with the modern mechanisation of cross-country sixwheelers, motor ambulances, and the mobile repair lorries. The story will go down from Cromwell's waggoners to the Peninsula. Crimea, and South Africa, and will show oxen and dog transport, the old caterpillar, the London omnibus in Franco, and many other interesting types. The oxen will come from Lord Bathurst's estate at Cirencester, the dogs from Mrs. Howard's Seale kennels, in Surrey, the Shackleton suits from Burberry, the old type cars from the Humber, Lanchester, Riley and Wolse ley factories, and "Old Bill' from th L.G.O.C. The progress of mobility dm ing the past two centuries will be denr onstrated in the procession.