GOSSIP FROM LONDON STAGELAND.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1190, 21 December 1894, Page 16

GOSSIP FROM LONDON STAGELAND.

“HIS EXCELLENCY.”

THE GILBERT-CUM-CARR OPERA A BRILLIANT SUCCESS.

From Our London Correspondent.

London, November 3

Those who imagined that the reconciliation between the once-attached trio of Savoyards would be lasting based their ideas on a very imperfect knowledge of Mr W. S. Gilbert’s character. The talented librettist is about as good a hater as bis brother Scotchman the De’il makes. Once he quarrels with a man, he quarrels with him always. I know a fellow rather well who, many years ago, annoyed Mr Gilbert by a jokelet he perpetrated when proposing the drama at some public function. No one else could see where the offence came in, or why it should have angered the dramatist, but angered he was, and when the misguided joker declined to make them both ridiculous by a public apology, he became implacable. That was 22 years ago, yet when the pair meet nowadays, as they constantly do, the great playwright invariably scowls. Self-interest induced Mr Gilbert to sign a truce with Sullivan and D’Oyley Cart* for a time, but with such a man it could be but a hollow affair, and some months ago war was again declared. Consequently, the writing of the score of “ His Excellency,” produced at the Lyric last Saturday, had to be entrusted to a fresh hand, and Dr Osmond Carr, of “Morocco Bound” and “In Town "notoriety, was selected. It was a great chance for a new man, and, if he had risen to the occasion, would have crystallised his reputation. But Dr Carr has not even done as well as Cellier did under similar circumstances. His music is washy, deficient in distinction, and lacking in idea, a fact the more to be regretted as Mr Gilbert has seldom written a brighter or better book. The first night excited all the interest of similar occasions at the Savoy. Despite sluicing showers of cold rain, crowds gathered outside pit and gallery entrances soon after noon, and waited patiently for the opening of the doors at 7.30. Jn the private boxes were the Lord Chief Justice, the Rothschilds, Sir George Lewis, Lady Jeune, and Sir Albert Rollit, and in the stalls and circle all the usual first-nighters. During the construction of the book of “ His Excellency,” Mr Gilbert appears to have speculated upon the extent to which persistent practical joking of a somewhat cruel kind can be carried without bringing deserved ruin to its originator. The plot consists of a series of experiments upon the credulity of persons of every degree practised by George Griffenfeld, Governor of Elsinore, with the assistance of his two daughters. They have no sympathy with the disappointment and vexation of their victims. They only regard the situation from their own point of view, and fail to see that what is fun to them may be disaster to others. As one of the characters remarks soon after the curtain has risen, “When a scheme for a practical joke enters the Governor’s head, he sticks at nothing in its accomplishment.” Not until he falls into his own snare, and, deserted and humiliated, is left on the stage to perform the duty of. a humble sentry, does Governor Griffenfeld realise the effects of his folly. With his accustomed judgment, Mr Gilbert has taken care that the characteristics of the Governor shall be made clear to the audience before he comes upon the scene. For example, they are led to suspect that the command for the statue of the Prince Regent, affording excuse for so much jubilation, did not really come from Copenhagen, but had its source in the mischievous imagination of the Governor of Elsinore. For the expectations of the young sculptor, who has spent his all on the materials for the statue, that he will not only be handsomely paid, but be created a count, and of the young medico that he will be appointed personal physician to the king, there are also no solid foundations. As a matter of fact, the Governor has hoaxed both the sculptor and physician, as well as the people who have congratulated them upon their success. Nanna and Thora, the Governor’s daughters, unfeelingly jeer at the two young men, who believe they are about to be ennobled. The girls pretend to think themselves unwerthy' of the love offered them, and ask that they shall not be given ideas above their station. When the sculptor declares that he and his companion are being laughed at; Thora exclaims, “Oh, aren’t the nobility shrewd ! ” whilst Nanna echoes, “ And isn’t the aristocracy quick at grasping a situation ! ” —two sentences that, on Saturday, evoked the heartiest merriment. Says Thora, afterwards, “It is a grand thing, to have a father who will condescend to play practical jokes upon the very meanest, rather than allow the family dignity to be. insulted,” and Nanna adds, “Dear papa is never so happy as when he is making dignified people ridiculous.” He causes the veterans of the garrison to be drilled as ballet-girls, and to perform all their evolutions to dance-steps. The hussars enter with drawn swords, and keep time to a jig . measure until the Governor, who has paused on the way to “ make a butter-slide on the Syndic’s doorstep,” allows them to halt for five minutes. Later, the hussars go through the orthodox pirouetting and elevated toepointing of professional coryphees with their corporal as the premiere danseuse —a grotesque scene that, on Saturday, was rapturously received.

Nemesis arrives in the person of the Regent, who, clad as a poor strolling player, is determined to personally enquire into the Governor’s pranks. His entry brings a neat skit on the poor quality of

most national anthems. Sings the disguised Regent:—

A king, though he’s pestered with cares. Though no doubt he can of ten trepan them ; But one comes in a shape he can never escape, The implacable National Anthem ! . Though for quiet and rest he may yearn, It pursues him at every turn — „ No chance of forsaking Its rococo numbers: . They haunt him when waking — if They poison his slumbers ! Like the Banbury lady, whom everyone knows, He’s cursed with its music wherever he goes ! Though its words but imperfectly rhyme, And the devil himself couldn’t scan them, With composure “polite he endures day and • night That illiterate National Anthem ! Struck by the likeness of the stroller to the statue of the Regent, the Governor sees his way to what •he considers a magnificent joke. With a golden bribe he persuades the supposed stroller to personate the Regent, and to dispense sham wealth and sham honours untold. The crowning stroke of fun suggested by Griffenfeld is his own degradation from proud Governor of the province to lowly sentry. Governor Griffenfeld can scarcely conceal his merriment as these directions are faithfully carried out by the masquerading stroller, but his visage changes when the unexpected appearance of two officers results in the discovery that the pretended Regent is the real Regent, bent on confirming the sham decrees. Treated with much variety of detail, this story is ample for a couple of acts.- The customary patter song for Mr Grossmith, whose utterance in even the most rapid passages is as distinct as when his association with comic opera commenced, occurs in relation to the exhaustion of verbal humour. “Where is it to come from? Why, everything of the kind has been said.”

Oh, happy was that humorist—the first that made a pun at all — Who, when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all ! How popular at dinners must that humorist > have been ! Oh, the days when some step-father for the query held a handle out, The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far ? And when no one knew where Moses was

f when Aaron put the candle out, And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar! But your modern hearers are In their tastes particular, And they sneer if you inform them that a

door can be a-jar ! This song has an encore verse, which was duly asked for on Saturday night. Among other pieces that specially pleased the audience were a duet and dance for an antiquated dume (Miss Alice Barnett), and the eccentric old Syndic (Mr John Le Hay), whom the Governor also befools; a song, “ A Hive of Bees,” with buzzing accompaniment, for Christina, a street-singer, who, having admired the Regent’s statue, easily becomes enamoured of the original; and a quartet and dance for the. Governor’s daughters and -their swains. ,In each of these numbers there.is abundant brightness and melodic fancy.

The remarkable woman who calls herself the Comtesse de Bremont, and 'who, hot so long- ago, visited Australia and South Africa, has been trying a fall with Mr W. S, Gilbert and (as usually happens to people who “buck-up” against the Bab Balladist) comes off second best. It seems the Comtesse proposed, in the interests of that rather' feeble imitation of the Pall Mall Budget, St. Paul’s, to interview W.S.G Having, however, heard something of the lady’s methods, and being, as he says, unwilling, to. place himself at the mercy of her good taste and discretion, the dramatist < declined the honour. He did not, however, 'say “ No ” outright, but answered politely —if evasively—that his terms for being interviewed for publication were 20 guineas. The Comtesse thereupon presented her compliments to Mr "W. S. Gilbert, and “in reply to his answer to her request for an interview for St. Paul’s, in which he' stated his terms for that privilege as 20 guineas, begs to say that she anticipates the pleasure of writing his obituary notice for nothing.”

Mr Gilbert forwards this epistolary gem to The Times, sweetly remarking he has little doubt it will be held to fully justify his declining the honour of an interview at her hands.

Mr Dampier’s “ Robbery Under Arms ” would have been all right at the Surrey Theatre or the Grand, and have delighted tlie ; audiences who frequent those houses. It seemed, indeed, quite to the taste of the first nig'ht gathering at the Princess, but I fear the piece will, nevertheless, not run there. The critics, almost without exception, tore the play to tatters. Moreover, had Mr Dampier visited Drury Lane and the Adelphi beforehand, he would not improbably have been prepared for this result. Rough-and-tumble melodrama of the' school that still thrives in the provinces and in the colonies goes down well enough in East and South London, but at a first-class West End theatre much more is demanded- Now, though the mounting of “ Robbery Under Arms ” might have passed muster, neither play nor acting are up to the Princesses mark. The piece begins well with a strong first act, but after that it fades off into a hotch-potch of circus horses and pistol-shots, which puzzled even those well acquainted with the book, and must have seemed a nightmare to those who hadn’t read it. As the two Marstons, Herbert Flemming and Paul Berton were altogether admirable. If the former had been Starlight, the piece would have gained enormously. Mr Dampier is an old and tried actor, with a style as set as Irving’s. He-can still make up a fairly young man, • but the resources of art are insufficient to do away with a “tubbiness’ which is cruelly at variance with the romance of his role. Now, Mr Bernard

Gould, whose handsome face and figure, are lost in the part of the stereotyped comic constable, would have looked and actbdthe gallant bushranger to perfection. Similarly, several ladies in the cast might advantageously have replaced Madam Ruppert as Aileen. As the inventor of a much-advertised face-wash, this lady may be a success, but as an ingenue she leaves a good deal to be desired. 1 . To those who know the Australian bush, anything funnier than the figure Madame Ruppert cuts mounted on a huge white cireus horse with a long tail can hardly be imagined. For the rest, Clarence.. Holt,, as Bon Marston, lacks the gruff ness of Boldrewood’s creation, but, generally, the minor parts were in good hands.