Footlight Flashes.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue V, 3 August 1895, Page 137

Footlight Flashes.

By

The Prompter.

4 T I Captain’s Story,’ a ballad, words and music JI by George M. Vickers, is given as a supplement with this week’s Graphic, and will, I venture to think, exceed in popularity all the other songs and music distributed with the Graphic during the last month or two. The ballad is a particularly taking one, and is the best song for a tenor or baritone that we have heard for a long time. It can, of course, be sung equally well by a soprano or mezzo. It is a pretty song and a touching refrain, and the chorus is one that attracts at once —one of those choruses you must join in even if you kill somebody in the attempt.

Miss Janet Achurch, who created so favourable an impression when she appeared in New Zealand some years ago, has made her debut in ’Frisco. Many people will be interested to hear what the Californians think of the lady. The criticism appended is from the leading ’Frisco paper. It is written in a queer, stacato style, but is very favourable:—‘And so we have seen Miss Janet Achurch! An excellently trained actress this, with a low, musical voice, a mobile face, and a fine appreciation of what is true and natural in dramatic art. She does not sway wildly about in moments of emotion, nor does she throw her optics upward till nothing remains visible but the white of her eyes. We all know this style, which, to tell the truth, has become a trifle tiresome. Miss Achurch evidently has as hearty a contempt for this hysterical school as she has for fine clothes. Never, never have I seen an actress who seemed to care so little for fine feathers. If as Stephanie de Morivart she appeared as a dowdy what is one to say of the costume she wore as Nora ? Not that it was out of keeping with the character. Quite the contrary. It was even picturesque. But it would not remain with the actress. It seemed, indeed, at one time as if the whole sartorial structure would drop to pieces ; and the number of pins that Nora Helmers was obliged to use during those three acts, to preserve the conventions of the stage, is simply awful to contemplate. However, all actresses wear fine dresses nowadays, and so it was positively refreshing to encounter one who cared not a rap about the hang or the cut of her skirts. Miss Achurch cares more for what she says than what she wears. Her diction is delightful. Without the slightest exertion you catch every word, though spoken ever so softly, that the actress has to speak. This is a rare blessing. And what a variety of expression and accents this actress has at her command ! Really, it is impossible to speak more naturally than she did in the first and third acts of ‘ A Doll’s House.’ And the same qualities were observable in her ‘Stephanie de Morivart.’ But what an awful nuisance this play of ‘ Forget-me-not ’ has gotten to be. To think that any one should ever have admired a drama as theatrical, as absurd as this. Miss Achurch’s talents alone made it tolerable.’

The most prosaic thing in this world is a policeman. In England, a little while ago, a professional diver gained a big advt. by jumping from the roof of a railwaycarriage as it crossed a bridge, and doing a dive of 150 ft or so into the river beneath. And when he got out of the water amid tremendous applause, an absolutely unmoved constable ran him in for ‘ leaving a carriage while it was in motion.’

Sir Arthur Sullivan’s Sunday parties are among the more special featuresof the London season, and rank with the exclusive entertainments given three or four times a year by Mr Alfred Rothschild. A wonderful programme was gone through by a most varied assortment of singers, a few nights before the last mail left, at Sir Arthur’s beautiful flat in Victoria-street. All society, in its most exclusive and smart phase was present, headed by the Prince of Wales.

Miss Daisy Madden, the Victorian Acting-Governor’s eldest daughter, is the next Australian to be presented to Queen Victoria. She is going to Paris for training under Marchesi. She was a pupil of Madame Steinhauer’s, the Danish singer.

Paderewski has nearly finished his four-act opera. The book is built on a modern subject, and the scene is located in the Carpathian Mountains, on the border line of Hungary and Galicia. Sir Augustus Harris is to produce the work at Covent Garden. It will be sung in French, but at Buda-Pesth it will be given in Hungarian, and at Dresden in German. Abbey and Grau own the American rights.

For Colman’s celebrated play of ‘The Iron Chest,’ as produced under unfavourable auspices at Drury Lane on the 12th March, 1796, Capon had supplied two very remarkable scenes, reckoned the finest that had ever been painted. The one presented an ancient baronial hall, with a correct music gallery and screen, of the times of Edward IV. and Henry VI. : the other, the library of Sir Edward Mortimer, composed from the choicest specimens of the Gothic then extant. In this the vaultins of the groined ceiling was taken from a portion of the beautiful cloister of the monks of St. Stephen, Westminster; the bookcases from another antique source ; and the painted glass from the windows of a time-honoured church in Kent. That these scenes were not painted on the conventionally shaped and situated flats and wings is apparent from the allusion to them in Colman’s well-known vituperative preface to the play. After railing at Kemble, he goes on to say: ‘My doubts, too, of this boasted care were not a little increased by a note which I received from the prompter, written by the manager’s orders three hours only before the first representation of the play, wherein at this late period my consent was abruptly requested to a transposition of two of the most material scenes in the second act ; and the reason given for this proposal was that the present stage of Drury—where the architect and machinist, with the judgment and ingenuity of a politician and a wit to assist them, had combined to outdo all former theatrical outdoings—was so bunglingly constructed that there was not time for the carpenters to place the lumbering framework on which an abbey was painted behind the representation of a library without having a chasm of ten minutes in the action of the play, and that in the middle of an act.’

A SUCCESS of an ignoble sort is ‘ McSorley’s Courtship,’ a farce by William H. McSort, with a pugilistic role for John L Sullivan.

A comic opera to be given at the Savoy, in London, is to be called ‘Jeanie Deans,’ and will, of course.be Scotch. Strange and Edwards are writing an Irish comic opera.

Titheradge’S break-down at Melbourne Princess’s, the other night, was a serious business for a few minutes (says the Bulletin'). Dr. Adams, who hurried down to the stage from the circle as soon as he saw the curtain drop, found Titheradge in an icy perspiration clinging to Boucicault for support. His heart had struck work, and it was not until the doctor straightened him out that Titheradge’s vital organ began to make healthful music again. An abscess at the root of a tooth originated this little drama. Titheradge, a very nervous man, required chloroforming by Dr. Neild before being operated upon by dentist Oldfield ; and the combined effects of chloroform and abscess knocked him out. There hadn’t been a long enough lapse of time between Titheradge’s afternoon and evening performances. He was still cold and tottery when he went on for the first act of ‘ Sowing the Wind,’ and by about 8.30 he felt so disposed to die that Australia nearly lost its old favourite. This was Titheradge’s first experience of his heart suspending operations —a terrible shock for a novice. One can get hardened to heart-stoppages, however, just as one can cultivate indifference to bank failures.

‘A Million of Money’ is a fine massive success at Melbourne Royal (says a local critic in the weekly of Australasia). The start for the Epsom Derby is now, for the first time on any stage, a machine-made spectacle, and White Stocking has improved a good I4lb in appearance since the first night. Also, the victory of the favourite excites wilder enthusiasm than ever, yet there is still one thing wanting to complete the moral lesson of Bland Holt’s Derby. He has forgotten to interpolate a ‘ tote ’ into which the multitude might pour their sovereigns with the knowledge that they were getting fair odds, less 8 per cent. A subsequent tableau, moonlight on the downs, might show a heap of bookmakers lying dead upon the course, with revolvers clutched in their right hands and despair written on their rigid countenances. These would show the tote’s value as a turf-purifier, and the Victorian Legislative Council would pass the forthcoming Bill by an overwhelming majority. * A Million of Money ’ is certain to run another week or two, so there will be time to adopt this suggestion. JEROME K. Jerome’s new play is called ‘The Prude’s Progress. ’