PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1172, 17 August 1894, Page 16

PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

“ Here come the actors, Buz, Buz.” —Hamlrt

The theatrical editor of the New Zealand Mail will be happy to re«eive and print route dates and any other information concerning the movements of companies. A post card giving “ route dates ” for the week is recommended. Address all communications for this column to “Lorgnette,” New Zealand Mail office, Lambton quay, Wellington.

NOTES BY LORGNETTE.

The Belle Cole season terminated on Tuesday evening. lam afraid the syndicate who are “running the show" must have lost money by the Wellington season. The Company was a good allround combination, but we have been overdone with concerts of late, and in bad weather people simply won’t turn out. The opposition at the Opera House had also much to do with the nonsuccess.

The Belle Cole Company gave a concert at Palmerston on Thursday. I hope that the remainder of the New Zealand tour will be a greater financial success than than achieved here.

The Montagu-Turner Opera Company close their Wellington season on Saturday, and go South next week.

Yet another concert company is due here shortly, consisting of Mr Philip Newbury, who is said to be a splendid tenor, Misses Emily Spada, Clara Mongredien, Lottie Aldred, and Mr Smith. The Company opened at Christchurch on Monday last.

Walter Bentley and his company have been doing well at Dunedin. Latest productions, “ My Partner," and “ Blow for Blow." Mr Bentley has also been appearing in “ O’Callaghan, on his Last Legs," but his Scotch accent must have made this a curious performance.

The Brisbane Gaiety Company (Mr St. John’s combination) return to the Opera House on the 20th. The Company now includes Professor Beaumont, “ The Man Fish," who gives, I am assured, a truly marvellous performance.

Mr Robert Inman, well known in New Zealand, has rejoined the Bland Holt Company. He had recently been appearing with the Holloways, under Mr George Coppin’s management.

The Australasian announces that Mr J. C. Williamson is negotiating for the rights of the “Yellow Ballet," with which Mdlle. Bartho, out in Australia with the Italian Opera Company, is said to be now astonishing Chicago. But a 3 Wellington is to be “boycotted" by Messrs W. and M. the announcement is of no great importance to us.

Few of us scribblers of theatrical gossip were aware that the late Dion Boucicault, the famous actor, author, and manager had a brother living in Australia. The Bulletin , however, says : —“Dion Boucicault’s brother, Aithur Leslie Bourcicault (he insisted on spelling it with an ‘ r ’) died in Sydney last week —72. He was on Melbourne Argus in the forties; founded Rockhampton Argus when the Port Curtis rush broke out ; sold out, and bought a brewery ; sold out, and bought Gympie Miner ; sold out, and bought Shepparton (Vic.) Argus; burnt out, and bought a little Burwood (Syd.) paper, which he was running when he died. In his youth he had a pretty wit ; and even later he crushed one loathsome contemporary by calling the editor—a sour, lank man— ‘ a walking emetic.’ He knew to a penny what a newspapor should cost to produce, and invariably saved the penny. Travelling revered his name, and always gave him their dodgers."

Mr Alfred Maltby’s “ London Comedy Company," which has been formed to make a tour of the Australian colonies, and which intended to open in Sydney in October, has deferred its departure from England until March next year.

Maggie Moore has been appearing at ahe Brisbane Opera House in Meg, the Castaway," and “ The Day of ’49."

The “ Second Mrs Tanqueray " has evidently made a great impression on the

Melbournites, who are much divided in opinion as to whether the play is “proper," that most detestable adjective which is ths pet property of Mrs Grundy.

The Australasian's opinion on “ The Second Mrs Tanqueray " may be of some interest, especially as Messrs B. and B. will produce the piece here early next year:—“A great play on an unpleasant topic—-that we believe will be popular verdict on “The Second Mr Tanqueray." There is not from first to last one line of dialogue unstamped by the impress of truth, or one single situation that dots not lie in the absolute sequence of events. The tragedy marches forward with irresistible progression ; consequence follows consequence, climax is piled on climax, and the final incident is the inevitable. Then the dialogue. Could anything be less conventional or more distinctly epigrammatic ? *Of all kinds of ignorance, mere innocence is the least admirable.’ ‘ Being on earth we must send our white robes to the laundry now and then, and in checking our little washing bills we learn charity for our fellow creatures.’ ‘The distances of life are in ourselves.’ Here are three excerpts from a veritable Golconda. And Paula’s last exclamation, ‘I did so much want to sleep to night.’ Was ever a truer note of pathos struck ? The play abounds in such artistic touches; and if ever genius was stamped upon a work it i 3 in the incident in which Paula hands her bygone lover’s letter to her husband in the terrible scene in the fourth act, with the remark—so natural, so tragic—* I never could read his writing.’

A company organised by Mr Arthur Garner has just revived “ Dr Bill," at the Sydney Criterion. I cannot imagine anyone wishing to see “Dr Bill" twice. It is funny, it is true, but after all its fun is of the now fossilised “Pink Dominoes" order, and very wire-drawn at that.

Snazelle’s daughter, who appeared with him here, and was mainly remarkable for singing persistently out of tune, has married a captain in the British army.

Mr T. V. Twinning and the Potter Bellew Company had the experience of playing in Hong Kong while the plague was raging.

General Booth proposes that all the junior members of the Salvation Army shall be taught music—his instrumental meaning being of the drum, the cornet, and the tambourine. Those who have heard this trinity of pieces in the hands and mouths of the members of the Army will second his proposition with prayer. —Sydney Referee.

By the last ’Frisco boat A. E. Greenaway, well known in New Zealand, left Sydney for America.

A little dot of a girl, Alma Grey her stage name, is appearing as a ‘ song and dance artist" at Sydney Alhambra. She is a four-year old daughter of Alf Boothman, an old hand in New Zealaud theatrical history.

George Rignold is appearing at Sydney Majesty’s in “The Lion’s Heart," a fearful and wonderful melodrama by all accounts. Rignold should try another tiip round New Zealand. He’s not been here fora longtime, and with a few good new pieces (new to us) and a fair com pany would draw big downstair audiences.

Herbert: “ The woman in the front of me at the play had on a hat as big as a kite, but it didn’t annoy me at all." Brown : “ What did you do ?" Herbert : “ Every, time it hid my view I gave her husband’s silk hat a kick."

The Bulletin gives the following humorous and honest opinion as to that dreary fraud Talmage : —“ His style of elocution was probably invented by himself and patented ; no other man could elocute in the same fashion without all his clothes flying asunder at the seams. Its principal feature is its unexpectedness. The preacher’s great drum-like voice rises with a cry like the yell of a lost 30ul, just when there seems to be no reasen for it, and the effect vaguely suggests that Talmage himself is doing the talking, and that the yells are put in by an accomplice, who always gets his cue at the wrong moment. Generally the pastor ends an impressive sentence on the very top of a howl, and then breaks off short like a precipice, and there is a ravine of prefound silence before he starts again. If the occasion is very im pressive indeed, he throws up his arms as he stops, and then he conveys a vague idea that he is a runaway horse and has got in front of himself to pull the animal up. Generally, however, his whoops and his gesticulations and his discourse all seem out of tune with each other, and an idea arises that he has wound himself up and set his long arms to fly out at a certain moment, so that they have to fly out whether it is the right moment or not.

“Talmage’s accent," (says the Bulletin) “ is, as he would himself describe it, something 4 currible,’ and his voice suggests a corncrake in low circumstances." Here is the Bulletin’s account of his first lecture:—“His opening lecture dealt with ‘The Bright Side of Things,’ and his philosophy is that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the best of all possible epochs, and everything is right

generally. The sky is just blue enough, and the grass just green enough, and the waters just clear enough, and our legs just long enough to reach the floor, and therefore we ought to be content. He is full of the glad optimism which goes with a big salary, and a big bank account, and a good dinner. There was not, in all his lecture, one gleam of a suggestion that the world contained such things as cold, hunger, pain or misery. Hi 3 illus trations all dealt with banks, and bankers, and people in business and affluence generally—except when now and then he spoke unctuously in his hard voice about beautiful girls, and then the little fat preacher on the platform beside him threatened to go into convulsions. In his own hard, unsympathetic way, Talmage is humorous ; his jokes are very, very old, but he has the art of whirling his lank arms as he utters them till somehow they sound almost new. AI3O, in his own hoarse and shriekful fashion, he is eloquent. Even in his humour, however, his yearning for hell fire can’t be altogether restrained. ‘ The Bright Side of Things ’ is illustrated by a garish, penny-dreadful account of the burning ot the Smithsonian Institute, in which Talmage lets himself loose about the devouring element and the ‘ spirits of destruction and calamity and w-o 0 0-0-0-0-0 o o o O OE,’ in a sudden yell and an abrupt stopprge which sugg sts that he has fallen down and broken both his knees. Then he winds up with an irrelevant bang and roar about the end of the world —the blackness, the ashes, the combustion, the general bursting up of all things and the falling of everything in the bottomless black abyss of frost and forgottenness—and retires. And the Bulletin's impression when he is gone is that Talmage is a hard, keen, eloquent man of business, and absolutely the best time payment sewing machine canvasser on this earth. In fact, his preaching strongly suggests that the Diety is a sewing machine, and that Talmage is pushing the sale of it for all he is worth."

An amusing incident took place at the City Hall, Auckland, while one of the Sapio-Urso concerts was going on. Towards the close of the first part of the programme, says the Herald, an individual in the pit got unpleasantly demonstrative, and was assisted to an outside ticket. During the interval he had got into the archway, and went up the back staircase to the back of the stage, apparently under the impression that he was again getting into the City Hall by one of the ordinary public entrances to the building. This was just at the beginning of the second part of the programme, and Herr Scherek and Herr Sapio had commenced to play a piano duet in front, when the Unknown, to the consternation of the ladies in the dressing-room, stepped forward and executed a jig. The ladies promptly banged to the door of the dressing-room, being unable to call for or procure assistance to deal with the unwelcome visitor, but the Unknown insisted as strenuously on the door being left open. There was nothing for it but for the ladies to get their backs up against the door and bravely withstand the siege. Meanwhile, Herr Scherek and Signor Sapio, finishing the item, hurriedly went behind the scenes and discovered the Unknown still dancing away and the ladies almost exhausted. The devotee of Terpsichore was handed but down the staircase, and left to finish the rest of his step on the asphalt.