THEATRICAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 1805, 25 June 1886, Page 23

THEATRICAL.

(Contrwutions from the Profession chronicling their movements and doings are invited. All communications to be addresed to "Pasquin," Otago Witness Office.)

NOTES BY PASQUIN. Our amusements in Dunedin during the past week have been limited to the exhibition of limelight views of the volcanic district, by two rival showmen, Mr A. H. Burton and Mr William Dougall, at the Princess' Theatre and the Lyceum Hall respectively. Mr Burton had slightly " the pull " of his opponent in the matter of attendance, but both entertainments were well worth visiting.

Leon and Cushman's Minstrels are playing at the Lome Hall, Auckland.

Mr Grattan Riggs and company opened at the Theatre Royal, Christchurch, on Tuesday in " The Irish Detective." A round of Boucicaultian dramas is to follow.

On the first news of the Tarawera eruption, Mr Rignold, on behalf of his firm, wrote offering to set aside the first night of " Called Back " at Abbott's Opera House, Auckland, as a benefit night for sufferers by the calamity. His generous proposal was of course accepted. The husband of Miss Amy Horton (Mr Buchanan Hepburn was an intending passenger by the Ly-ee-moon, and was actually on board, but finding himself short of money, went on shore to cash a cheque, and missed the steamer.

Frank Hewett, of Hewett's Musette Company, has been divorced from his wife in London. He is consoling himself in the work of engaging a variety company to accompany him in a tour beginning at South Africa, and finishing up in Australia.

Poor Frederick Broughton, who for years unsuccessfully hawked about such delightful little comedies as " Withered Leaves " and " Ruth's Romance," seems to have made his hit in dramatic authorship too late to save him from " the usual thing." He was lately arrested at Brentford, near London, for wandering at large, and, being found to be suffering from delirium trcmeiis, was remanded to a workhouse infirmary.

The sudden deposition and demise of King Ludwig of Bavaria come as a surprise, because it is precisely the thing that might have been expected to happen, and somehow events that are naturally expected rarely do come to pass. Eis Majesty had been as palpably mad as any Christian in the four continents for years past, as witness the costly operatic performances whereat he sat shrouded in curtains alone in the solitary theatre, his aerial lake, and the building of that gigantic folly, the Bayreuth mountain theatre. According to the cables, King Ludwig had no sooner been pronounced insane and deposed than it was found necessary to chloroform and straight-waistcoat him, and he had no sooner recovered from the chloroform and the straight waistcoat than he tried to drown himself, and succeeded. The strangest part of the story is that a court physician should have perished with the monarch in an endeavour to save him. This is not the professional custom of court physicians.

Young Edward Sothern, son of the famous Lord Dundreary, lias been having a merry quarter of an hour with his dearest friend, a Mr Haworth, whose rooms in London adjoined his own. About 2 o'clock in the morning Mr Haworth heard a cry for help from Sothern, who was tearing round in the dark and shouting something about a burglar. Both gentlemen began to pound each other mercilessly, under the impression that they were mauling the thief. Finally they succeeded in knocking each other down. Then somebody brought a light, and it turned out that Mr Sothern had been suffering from a nightmare. The next day Mr Sothern wore a green patch over his eye, and Mr Haworth's mouth was surrounded with little strips of court plaister.

" Patti has married Nicolini" — so says the cable. Now that the pair are united in law as well as in fact it is possible that we shall begin to hear of the inevitable matrimonial dissensions. Let us hope not however, for, if so, it will be a painful satire upon the effects of marriage, as they have jogged along comfortably enough together hitherto. Of Course Mdme. Patti was not " received," but neither will she be now.

A few exceedingly foolish American women have been the means of suddenly making Mr G. R. Sims (Dagonet) the most talked-of man ni the States. All the Dagonet ballads are innocent enough in all conscience, and one of them, a particularly touching little poem called " Ostler Joe," has even received the imprimatur of Mrs Kendal, who recited it in public. There is nothing in it that could bring the blush of shame to the cheek of the most bashful curate that ever ate buns. But when it was read in an American salon the other day, a number of fluttered doves shook their virtuous feathers with indignation and walked out. The story of poor Joe, who took back to his heart the sad but repentant woman who had injured him, was too much for their nice minds. The news of the insult to " Ostler Joe " soon spread, and it got into the papers. The result was a fierce demand for copies of the poem ; booksellers' stalls were ransacked, ipd. the story of " Qstler Joe " was quoted in a hundred American 'papers. ' Sims and sanctity became the watchwords of American society, and now Dagonet is the widest read poet in all America. The prudery of a few silly women has immortalised the clever author.

In the production of "Hamlet" at the Eorte S.t. Martin Theatre, tlie deqeased king's portrait on a panel ' of the wall, and that of the reigning king worn by the Queen in a locket, supply the illustration of the line, " Look on this picture and on that." Later on the panel portrait becomes endowed with life, and glides from the wall across the room, serving for the ghost. Bartley Campbell, the American dramatist and manager, has been compelled to call his creditors together, and obtain some forbearance. He has several companies on the road •with his own plays.

Johann Strauss is about to embody the musical reminiscences of his youth in an opera, the leading motivi of which are to be yeyivals of dance tunes composed b7 him

when he was a lad studying engineering against his will. His boyhood, as well as that of his brothers, Joseph and Edward, was spent under the roof that sheltered his renowned father, whom, however, he seldom saw, for his parents were separated, and for many years lived in different storeys of the same house, the Strauss boys having been judicially assigned to their mother's care. All three, when still in round jackets, were familiar figures in several musical salons of Vienna, where they constantly played their father'stjompositions, and sometimes their own. These musical feats of course reached old Strauss' ears, and it struck him one day as absurd and unnatural that he should be about the only musician in the Kaiserstadt who had never heard anj r of his own sons' compositions Forthwith he sent a message to his wife, who occupied apartments two flights of stairs higher up, to the effect that he should esteem it a favour if she would permit his sons to pay him a visit, and also lend him her piano, as, strange to say, the Waltz King (as the Viennese christened Strauss the elder) had no piano in his rooms. Down came the piano and the boys, who began to play, first their father's music and then their own. The old man's delight was unbounded, and he embraced them over and over again before sending them back to their mother, together with the piano and his " compliments and thanks."

Mrs Langtry intends to revisit America in the autumn.

Mdme Judic appeared in the role of conductor at a Sunday evening concert prior to her departure from New York, loading the orchestra in the first public performance of a new waltz.

Mr Willie Edouin has closed the doors of the Novelty Theatre, London, after trying hard and vainly, in partnership with Lionel Brough, to make it pay. Their only real success was " The Babes."

A London " Private Secretary " — Mr Arthur Helmore— as good an impersonator of the Rev. Robert Spalding as Mr Frank Thornton, has been honoured with a unique present. It was a bouquet composed entirely of Bathbuns arranged symmetrically on wires, and graduating in size as they reached the apex. In the centre of this queer nosegay grew a soda water bottle of milk, the reverend one's favourite beverage.

Mdme Patti's just completed tour brought, for 31 performances, £46,000 receipts, of which, £20,000 was paid for rent of theatres, orchestra chorus, &c, £15.000 to herself, and £11,000 net profit to the two managers. The diva is now at Craig-y-nos, resting a little. Well-earned rest too.

Among the presents Mdme Patti received at Lisbon was an oval plate of massive gold, a sterling silver statuette of considerable size upon |t, carrying, with outstretched arms, another massive gold coupe of exquisite workmanship. Mdme Patti, it seems, was called over 40 times at her last appearance in Portugal, but she could never approach the footlights, so covered was the stage with flowers, which it was quite impossible to carry off there and then. Mdme Patti says that the public of Lisbon are the most difficult to please; that they preserve an icy silence when a singer does not satisfy them, but that you cannot make a gruppetto perfectly well without instantly a sign of approbation going through the house.

At a Parisian cafe ehantant the other evening a prima donna commencing a sentimental ditty was interrupted by the cries of a baby. As a matter of course, there was an uproar, and cries of " Turn it out, turn it out." A giant, bearded like the "pard.,"who was holding the infant in his arms, and who tried in vain to quiet it, stood up to expostulate. But the prima donna left him no time. " Ladies and gentlemen," she said, interrupting her song, " I had better tell you that baby is mine. If I do not give it its supper it will continue to cry." Stepping down from the platform, she took the child in her arms, then, while it was enjoying its meal, she came back, made a sign to the pianist, and resumed her song as if nothing had happened."

At the Grand Theatre, Islington, Messrs Wilraot and Charleson have mounted a strictly new and original drama from their joint pens, entitled "Hard Hearts." It is chiefly remarkable for the extra deep dye of its villains, and the plot is given by one writer in a poetical nutshell as follows :— There was a man be had two sons, both born of the same mother, Bad Jasper was tho name of one, Good Mark he

was the other. The father was a villain bold, and so was Jasper too ; One wifey he deserted, and another sought to

WOO. This was a maid with untold gold, Sweet Edith was her name, Her heart she gave to Mark so bold, who played the same old game. Said Darrell pere to "DavneMJils — " Of Mark you must get rid ; So murder do, and swear 'twas Mark ;" fds did as he was bid. But O he made a big mistake ; he killed his wicked pater; And then laid plans for Mark's arrest ; and then — but stay, see later. Poor Mark in fear went off to sea, and so escaped the beak ; The ship was old and rotten, and she quickly sprung a leak. Into the waves Mark boldly plunged ; with him went Jasper's wife ; She'd done her best to get him hanged, he only saved her life. Back to Old England safe Mark got, buoyed up by faith and hope ; Bad Jasper he was buoyed up too — by Mr Ketch's rope.

There is a painful punning epidemic in London just now. Messrs Keece and Farnie sin terribly in their new burlesque "Lurline," at the Avenue ; and even that stern and sombre tragodian, J. L. Toole, has been bitten. When he re-opened his theatre with I' Fast and Loose " recently, the house having been closed to allow a new roof to be supplied at the stage end of the building, "This new roof," said Mr Toole, "had been ordered by his architect in a rather roofianly manner. He had to admit that they couldn't continue 'going it' with a tile off, and therefore he had to say, in classical language, ' De roofibus non est disputandum.' " A " national drama," entitled " God Save

the Queen," and dealing with the Irish question, is being played with great success in Bristol.

The following is by no means bad. 1 annex it from a Melbourne paper. On a certain occasion a celebrated star was playing " Macbeth," when the First Murderer, either through stupidity or nervousness, forgot the entire text of his part, and the dialogue consequently took this strange turn : — Macbeth : " There's blood upon thy face !" Murderer, with his mind drifting miles away, and perfectly unconscious of what he is saying : " There is." Macbeth, staggering for a moment as to how he shall proceed, asks suggestively : " Is't Banquo's blood ?" Murderer, mechanically : "It is." Macbeth : " Thou art the best o' cutthroats." Murderer, interrupting: "I am." Macbeth, with a groan; " Yet he's good that did like for Fleance." Murderer, smiling idiotically : "He is." Macbeth, now wildly spasmodic : " I'll brain you when I come off ;" aloud and suggestively, as before : "Is not Fleance 'scaped ?" Murderer : "He is." Macbeth : " Then comes my fit again." Murderer : "It does." Macbeth, making a rush at murderer • " You confounded beast, get out." Murderer, with a startled jump : " I will." And he did.

No man who writes dramatic letters and leaves them upon his study table for his servant to post, being well assured that the said servant will do nothing of the kind, is deserving of much consideration. But Scalfax being a popular and pampered purveyor of theatrical intelligence— a kind of chartered libertine — is entitled to have a few of the gems of his last week's letter preserved. But the principal part of his interesting budget is unavoidably sacrified.

Scalfax, then, remarks inter alia concerning the revival of "Patience" at the Melbourne Royal : —

There is nothing special to note unless it be the incapacity of Mr Frank Ridsdale for the part of Archibald Grosvenor. The announcement that he comes from Mapleson's Opera Company sounds well, but it appears a bitter sarcasm when you see him on the stage.

Signora Majeroni and Mr Wybert Reeve have the lion's share of the work and applause in " Only Dust " at the Bijou ; and Signora Majeroni is displaying a talent for comedy which she ought to cultivate. Tragedy is pretty nearly played out. The public mind prefers a dogfight or an indecent farce. We are approaching an age of indecency in literature, and I suppose the stage will also become, to put it mildly, somewhat more pronounced than it is at present. There are things done on the stage, say in " Falka," at the present day which would have been resolutely hissed some years ago. Now they are laughed at. To laugh is to condone, There are people who will tell you that the stage was never more moral than now. They are gaudy twisters of the truth.

Whenever I feel hipped and out of sorts I climb the Bourke street hill and ensconce myself in the gorgeous fauteulls of the Nugget Theatre, and see one of D'Orsay Ogden's plays. He is doing " Oliver Twist" just now. D'Orsay's dramas are better than a circus with a lion-tamer thrown in. He has a reckless disregard of the unities and an allpervading faith in three set scenes, which makes one wonder how he lives so long. A brick will be fired in that house some night, and a tragedian will have to go out for repairs.

" East Lynne" is crowded in every Thursday evening, and Miss Helen Fergus impersonates the sickly heroine of the sickest of sickly plays. Why " East Lynne" has such a hold on the female mind I cannot guess, even if I wanted to. Lady Isabel was the biggest idiot in fiction to act in such an irrational manner as she did; and manufactured her troubles as she went along. No sane woman would have done so. She would have grabbed hold of Archibald Carlyle's auburn hair with a firm two handed grip, and in live minutes the matter would have been settled. " The Streets of New York" is D'Orsay's latest atrocity.

So much for " Scalfax" of June 7th ; " Scalfax'' of June 14th blossoms in perennial beauty below.