THEATRE MANAGER'S EXPERIENCE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1696, 31 August 1904, Page 87 (Supplement)

THEATRE MANAGER'S EXPERIENCE

This is the time of the year when theatrical engagements are made by the principal Paris theatres for the winter season (says the Paris correspondent of “Pall Mali”), and a day or two ago M. Porel, the manager of the Vaudeville Theatre, was the victim of some disreputable practical joker. M. Porel, who is still, by the way, the legal husband of Mmo. Rejane, since the divorce has not yet been completed, had announced that he would attend to engage artists, and lie arrived to find the theatre crowded with the most extraordinary and motley collection of mummers ever seen in the vaudeville. The ladies were of the class one meets with on the outer boulevards, and as for the men, their raiment would not have been out of place at a costume ball. As soon as M. Porel had recovered from his surprise he asked for explanations, and discovered that some heartless rascal had spread the report that, sick of his experience with Paris “stars,” the well-known manager had determined to compose his next season's troupe with new and undiscovered “talent” from the travelling fair theatres, in which, it was said, he had noticed real dramatic ability, M. Porel was the first to laugh at the joke, and in a bantering and good-humoured way oxp-cssed his astonishment to the assembled crowd that “artists” with such a knowledge of the world should allow themselves to bo so easily gulled.