Celebrities in Wax

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 388, 23 June 1928, Page 27

Celebrities in Wax

(Continued from Page 26) With Jheavy steps I descended the ; gloomy dungeon which is called the i Chamber of Horrors. It was lit only j by guttering torches and I felt that • there were ghosts haunting its upper j air. Oddly enough most of the mur- j derers seemed mild and rather tender j compared with the villainous faces of the statesmen upstairs. There was not one sinner I would not have shaken by the hand —except, perhaps, Jane Dyer, the baby farmer who had a face like a gargoyle and who stared balefully at each human babe that went past on a mother’s arm. I could see she longed to snatch the innocent and finish its small life. Luckily, there were railing to restrain her. There was one murderer—l forget his name, but he strangled his wife with a bootlace on Mangate Sands — who had the face of an angel. So beatific was it that I felt It should have been upstairs with the Royal family or next to the Sleeping Beauty. Raphael would have loved it. And Charlie Peace evidently had the lineaments of a kindly footballer, if one is to believe his waxen image. Altogether the Chamber of Horrors was not very horrific. It was not, of course, pleasant to see a satinbreechjed, broace-coated aristo with his head on the block waiting patiently for the guillotine —stained with blood-coloured paint—to fall, and lor his decapitated body to be tumped into the ghoulish basket that waited hungrily close by. Nor would one ask to visit every day the blind-folded gentleman "who was standing at *he very edge of the hangman’s trap-door, with a kindly wax chaplain in attendance. But theer was something preposterous, something so _ incredible about this galaxy of villains that u failed in its intention to horrify. It was much, much more disconcerted by Mr. Baldwin and the speechless commissionaire. While we are on the subject of entertainment —if one counts such a ghoulish affair as Madame Tussaud's as entertainment —I must tell you of the Moscow Art Theatre Company, which is at the moment playing in London. Lately I have given up going to theatres as three out of every four are crime dramas whose authors, apparently for the sake of economy, subpoeana the audienc eas a gigantic jury or an enormous string of witnesses. I object to being an unpaid super—not on economic grounds (though I am not, at all sure it is lawful to force the job of acting upon perfectly innocent people without paying them) but because it is so dull. Besides, most of the crime companies hail from America and it is difficult to understand their language. The Moscow players do not speak English and I know no Russian, but I was able to understand “Uncle Vanya” and the “Cherry Orchard” and the “Brothers Karamazoff,” whereas the “Trial of Mary Dugan” will be for ever beyond my ken. One saw and felt the tragedy of those unhappy brothers, was tormented with the young girl in “Uncle Vanya,” smelt the dripping blossom of the cherry trees beyond the locked door in the last act of “The Cherry Orchard.” Here, at last, after the arid months, was an oasis of good acting, filled with delicate, subtle differences of light and shadow; acting that went sharply to those places in the head and heart that are not found out by crime dramas and inane bedroom farces. Each time the last curtain has fallen upon the Russian actors I have asked myself why I am not bedizened with rare jewels and flowers so that, with the enthusiasm of an older time, I might strip myself of these beauties and fling them on the stage. One cannot tear off a string of glass beads and a calico forget-me-not with anything resembling fine frenzy. Alas! Gretna Green has slipped into fashion again like the crinoline and the bustle. One does not, of course, elope there any longer, but one arrives compleet with train and veil to bow the knee before the blacksmith. It is all perfectly legal, and marriages in that romantic spot have no longer the air of adventure. There still remains, however, one careless, romentic way of tying two people together till the advent of death or divorce. This is the gipsy way by which one solemnly makes a vow of fidelity and then jumps over first a small fire and then a pair of tongs—presumably to clinch the matter. Unfortunately the gipsy clans are nowadays few and far between, and one would have to carry train and veil for many foresty mile sbefore one found the necessary fire and the necessary tongs. May has burst upon us with a set of fashions that are reminiscent of Hamstead Heath. “Fevvers” and. “buttings” are the only wear. Well, when I say only—l mean the only adjunct to hats an dfrocks. I am not suggesting that we are so far enlightened as to go abofit decked only wiht a bird’s wing and a dozen pearl buttons. And even had we arrived at such a state of evolution it would be a fatal course to pursue in this weather. I find I have come to the end of my column without telling you anything serious about Governments or movements, poets or politics. But it is not my fault. It is Madame Tussaud’s. P.M.