THE ACTORS' ALLEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11402, 20 April 1899, Page 7

THE ACTORS' ALLEY.

'OUT OF WORK—UTILITY—UNDER- !.; '. ''■•: STUDY. I often shed tears in tile motley Strand," wrote Charles Lamb, " from fulness of joy at. so .much life." Would lie feel that joyous emotion if he could see the Strand now' It is more '' motley" than ever, and in a professional sense that Lamb could not have had in his mind. Here the actors walk, the unemployed actors with 20 years' training. Near a. door which loads to refreshments you see one long, clean-shaven face in weary colloquy with another. You need nnt hear the words:. the mournful gaze of each over the other's shoulder (have you ever noticed that two peoplo with a common woo never'look in each-other's eyes'.'Hell'thft riricVfi'f-'fiKiiiy ' Worthy fellows that are out of engagements, this pair being the two most deserving. ' In' Lamb's days the'plnyora were very few, and they could not have trooped up and down I 'the .Strand in tins disconsolate fashion. What I "fulness of^oy" could spring in his heart | now if he saw a, careworn " utility man',1' \ with round shoulders and a shabby coat, trying to, whip up a, " wheeze" for Hte diversion of a trio of damsels, who explain to him ; .with filial'intimacy that: they are " walking on " at the theatre where his talents are unknown? 'Perhaps Lamb would be taken with tho tall young woman who walks .haughtily tiy heedless of giggles from the little group. She has just jnsen from the ranks to the dignity of"'understudy," and carries her part, in her hand ir. a brown-paper cover (tjio Strand in littered with these brown-paper covers), which is a proo: or) runic and station, like marriage •■lines.'' And every day the ''understudy" I walks ■tho > s<ime way with the same part, and spoaki^never a word of it, for tho actress who plays It refuses to have that trifling ailment j which would take her gently from the scene ! ] "So much life !" Lamb might wonder1 now j wny «i 6 two old churches, stemming a tido that grows ever more profane and hideous, do not drop their coping stones on these myriad heads. Eo was not a squeamish man. '' Streets, streets, streets" were liis delight, and a dirty alley was a flower to him. But the Strand is becoming an alley in which you cannot breathe, in which the music hall mob and the eating-house mob and those melancholy, actors with the long blue faces and the 20 years' training tlint interests neither manager nor public, and the mad throng of vehicles of the largest size are turning the " fulneso of joy " to tho grip of suffocation. —Speaker.