THE STINE AND EVANS COMPANY.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 703, 27 August 1903, Page 16

THE STINE AND EVANS COMPANY.

This company concluded their Auckland season on Monday, with a programme of all the vaudeville items of the Company, showing the members at their best in this variety of entertainment. I am not quite sure that Vaude-

ville is their true forte, though they certainly do shine at it. I should like to see Mr Stine and Miss Evans and Miss Marshall in plays of a higher type than those in which they have appeared here. All three are genuine comedians, who seem to me t’o have been cramped and choked in some measure by the inanities and absurdities of the dialogue and plot. All that devolved upon the performers themselves was well done, in many cases excellently done, but it is beyond the power of man to make jokes and locutions that have grown stale on the lips of street gamins amusing. “Say, here now,” “I guess so,” “rats,” “I don’t think” (with the accent on the “don’t,”) are really hopeless. Then again, the worst and certainly the most irritating styles of alleged American) accent are depended on. No one will make me believe that educated Americans say “oppertoonity” or “peecoonerary” (pecuniary), yet these arid other eccentricities were current in every alleged play. Much might perhaps be done to, improve the productions, but “Mama’s New Husband” and the rest can never be twisted into genuine vehicles for satisfying humour such as. “Are You a Mason ?” or “The Lady of Ostend,” or “A Little Ray of Sunshine.” I hope, nevertheless, that the Stine and Evans class of fun will catch on, and this for the sake of the company themselves, who are a genuine lot, and for that of the manager, Mr Stephenson, whom everybody likes. I wish them all good luck.