HIS MAJESTY’S.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 29 May 1913, Page 20

HIS MAJESTY’S.

BEEBE’S POLITE VAUDEVILLE. Mr. Vincent M. Beebe’s celebrated company of vaudeville and minstrel stars will commence a season of seven nights at His Majesty’s Theatre on Saturday, May 31. The company consists of 17 performers, and is claimed to be the strongest in point of numbers and general excellence of any similar organisation that has toured Australasia in recent years. Mr. Dan Keilderson the protean actor, impersonator, ventriloquist and mimic, is the only member of the company who has previously appeared in New Zealand, and as he has but returned to the colonies after an absence of several years in England, with an entirely new act called “The One Man Music Hall,” every item and artist on the long programme can be said to be new to the Dominion. Mr. Beebe has had many years’ experience in conducting successful theatrical enterprises in America and Australia, and is well known both inside and outside the profession, as a manager who never does things by halves. His companies have toured Australia and the East with marked success during the past six years, and it is his intention, if the present New Zealand tour is fairly successful to establish his personal headquarters in New Zealand and devote his entire time to supplying theatregoers of the Dominion with the best in refined vaudeville at reasonable prices. Artists in the present company all possess established international reputations, and include, in addition to Mr. Keilderson, the Rollicking Rockleys, clever sketch artists and producers; Miss Rubee Raymond, a charming American toe dancer; Miss Ella Conrad, soprano, and Miss Ruby Cox, contralto, operatic vocalists; the Acrobatic Arteens, lady and gentleman acrobats imported from England by Mr. Beebe; Mr. W. White, coon singer and dancer; the Musical Bartletts, who combine humour with harmony, and play every musical instrument from a mouth organ to a set of musical motor car horns; Messrs. Spilker and Fairbank, comedians, who know how Jo amuse without being vulgar, and Miss Edie Leeder, a dainty little serio and dancer.

The company opens in a 45 minute production of modern minstrels called Merry Moments, for which elaborate scenery and stage properties are carried, and the long programme of speciality acts follows in quick succession, an innovation being to give one or two large specialty items before the half time interval.