NOTES BY PASQUIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1911, 6 July 1888, Page 28

NOTES BY PASQUIN.

The silence that has brooded over things theatrical in New Zealand for a week or twojpast has been broken by Mr Charles Arnold, who arrived whole and sound at the Bluff on Monday last and opened in Invercargill the same evening with " Hans the Boatman." There was a big house, and by all accounts the piece went famously, but I am not going into details until we have an opportunity of seeing it for ourselves, which we shall have on Friday night. Suflice it to say that Mr Arnold proves all that he was expected to be, and that the juvenile performers, Miss May Hannan and Master Gardiner, quickly won favour. The leadi ig lady is Miss Norton, and Miss Jessie Grey, well-known here, is also with the company. Beyond a doubt there is going to be an epidemic of musical prodigies. As if Josef Hofman and Otto Hegner were not enough. I see that two more little musical mushrooms have started up in Vienna. On« is Miss Hermine Biber, aged 12, who can play Rubinstein's ♦■ Valse Caprice," which the composer himself declared he could not play properly. Th • other, little Leopol Spielmann, who is of the mature age of four and a-half, and who plays Bach's fugues and Beethoven's Wuldstein sonata.

Naturally DunedinHes follow the peregrinations of " The Hansom Cab" my<4) ry wherever it goes with interest. It is "off" in London and " on " in New York, but unfortunately the Yankees don't take as kindly to it a3 the Cockneys. <( Nym Criukle" (real name Wheeler), a well-known New York critic, says: — "The attempt to develop current sketches into plays has a brilliant defeat in • The Mystery of a H-msotn Cab ' Anything more undramatic than the treatment of that rather slender story I have nob recently seen. The worst of all errors is committed in the first aofc, for that act leaves no room for further interest or suspense." The unlucky Novelty Theatre, of which there bis periodically been something dismal to chronicle ever since I have been writing these intes, has burnt the fingers of another pair of Speculators. Messrs George Giddeus and T. G. Warren are the victims, and they have dropped a "cool thousand " over a mouth or two's tenure pf the house.

A different version to that already published qf the terms for Madame Patti's present South American tour states that the prima donna receives £1000 a night certain in English gold, and if the receipts exceed £2000 she receives 40 per c int. of the surplus She is only obliged to sing fjvice a week, attends no rehearsal*, receives all travelling expenses, &c. She will not starve

The veteran tenor Tamberlik (aged 68) has been singing in Paris, and is likely to sing in London this summer. He has been of tener killr d by the newspapers than any man living, but still hangs out gamely, and when not travelling as a1;a 1 ; present directs a small arms factory at BJadrid.

If anyone wants 'the origin of negro minstrelsy here it is, as argued out by a New York piper: "The history is traced through John Smith, or ' Nigger Jack,' who, about 1838, sang * Jim along 1 Josey ' through Dan Emraett, Gougb, and others, to E. P. Christy. He qrganised his company in Buffalo. Some of its members besides himself were Dick Hooley, Earl Pierce, and George Christy, whose real name \fis Harrington. They made a t^ur of the principal American cities in 1843-44, but finally established themselves in New York, E. P. Christy made a fortune of £80,000, but, it is said, became insane from fear that the war would 8 veep away hi* propprty. George Christy also made a large amount of money, but died compiratively poor. The real name of John Strange Winter, a ithor of " Booties' Baby," now plajing at the Globe, is Mrs Stannard.

One of the few honest men in dramatic matters is Richard Mansfield, the American actor. Wishing to play a version of "Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll," he consulted Mr Stevenson in a Straightforward manner as to the adaptation, and has shared the profits of the piece fairly and squarely with the English author of the (romance. A certainly peculiar one-act play has been produced tentatively at the Princes?, London. Th'ngs are well ahead when the curtain rises. A Mr Drummond having entertained his friend C iptain Punter at dinner, sends Mrs D. to bed, goes in for a big gamble wit h the dice. The captain wins £5000 by throwing double sixes, and going double or quits he wins Drummond's V Last Stake " (the title of the play) also with two sixes. The " last stake " is nothing more or less than the host's life and his wife. If he loses, Drummond is to commit the happy despatch within 12 hours, and is to leave Mrs D. a legacy to the winner— a highly moral and feasible arrangement. When the captain takes his departure he would like also to take the dice, but doesn't get a chaDce. Being gon«f>, Drummond pets out his revolver, and is half disposed to let the dice tell him how many hours he may live, but he puts down the box and tells the dreadful truth to Mrs D., who, coming to fetch him to bed, is naturally much alarmed as she listens to his story. One would suppose this story would " murder sleep," but Mrs D., having heard it, goes to bed again for a minute—only for a minute — and then comes stalking forth like Lady Macbeth in her slumbers. She talks to herself, and dreaming that what is good for the gander cannot be bad for the goose, begins to shaks the dice-box, and indulges in three throws. Like the artful dodger ia "Les Deux Aveugles," she throws sixes every time, while her hubby looks on amazed, ani suddenly suspects what he might have suspected before — that the dice are loaded. Of 00 arse they are, and so when the captain bold re urns on the pretence that he wants his cigarC -Be, a case of another sort is put before him, a id at the pistol's point he is made to band over the lOU's he has taken for the "debt of honour." "Now get out," says Drummond, V and wheu next you gamble with loaded dice, be careful not to leave them behind you " " I'll t tke damned good care that I don't," remarks the captain bowled — bowled out, and as he makes his exit the curtain comes down.