"PUSS IN NEW BOOTS."
Five hours is a great space out of a man's life, but that was
precisely the time taken by Mr. ARTHUR COLLINS to present his _Puss in
New Boots_, so that I had leisure to study the book of the words, sold
shamelessly to the unsuspecting (of whom I was not one), and compare
the rough sketches of our three standard authors of the Lane, Messrs.
COLLINS, SIMS and DIX with the version, by no manner of means final,
of the comedians. A pantomime book is on the whole rather a mournfully
unsubtle document. The thing is frankly not meant to be read when the
blood is cool. It is the Action, Action and again Action of such hefty
knock-abouts as WILL EVANS, ROBERT HALE and STANLEY LUPINO that makes
the dry bones live and the old squibs crackle. And it is good fun to
watch the audience at their share of authorship, setting the seal of
their approval upon the happy wheeze, the well-contrived business,
and blue-pencilling with their silence the wash-out or the too obscure
allusion.
[Illustration: DIANA OF THE LANE.
_The Baroness_ ... Mr. ROBERT HALE.]
The show is substantially new throughout--new songs, new scenery, new
japes, new acrobatics. A new Puss, too, as well as new boots; and,
without any reflection on little Miss LENNIE DEANE, who was quite an
adequate Puss of pantomime, we may regret Miss RENÉE MAYER.
Miss FLORENCE SMITHSON still delights the curious with her Swedish
exercises in alt, and makes a very pretty lady of high degree for a
pantomime marquis, who is no other than Miss MADGE TITHERADGE stepping
down from the "legitimate" and bringing an air and an elocution
unusual and admirable. She made her excellent speaking voice do duty
in recitative for song, and the innovation is not unpleasing. If it
be fair in frivolous public places to dig down to those thoughts that
better lie too deep for tears, Mr. ALFRED NOYES' _A Song of England_,
clear spoken by her with tenderness and spirit, is a better instrument
than most.
Mr. HALE's _Baroness_ challenges comparison with Mr. GEORGE GRAVES's.
She is perhaps more womanly ("no ordinary" type), less grotesquely
irrelevant and profane--though she does her bit. On the other hand,
she is more active and less repetitive. When, the good fairy endowing
her with beauty, she appeared as DORIS KEANE in _Romance_, that was an
applauded stroke. And when she lied beneath the tree of truth and the
chestnuts fell each time truth was mishandled, thickest of all when
it was asserted that a certain Scotch comedian had refused his salary,
this was also very well received. On the whole, then, a satisfactory
Baroness.
Mr. LUPINO (the miller's second son) is really an exquisite droll,
and I don't remember to have seen him in better form. He has some of
the authentic ingredients of the old circus clown--a very valuable
inheritance.
Mr. WILL EVANS is always good to watch, always has that air of
enjoying himself immensely that is the readiest way to favour. He
seemed at times to be, as it were, looking wistfully for his old pal,
GRAVES; missed probably that companionable nose and those reliable
_da capos_ which give such opportunity for the manufacture of gags;
whereas Mr. HALE is a "thruster." But cooking the _recherché_ dinner
in the gas cooker that becomes a tank, and putting up the blind and
laying the carpet--here was the WILL EVANS that the children of all
ages applaud.
I always find the Lane big scenes and ballets more full of competing
colour and restless movement than of controlled design. But the Hall
of Fantasy, with its spiral staircases reaching to the flies, was an
ambitious effort crowned with success. The dance of the eight tiny
zanies was the best of the ballet. The Shakspearean pageant at the end
might be (1) shortened, and (2) brightened by the characters throwing
a little more conviction into their respective aspects--notably the
ghost of _Hamlet's_ father. However, as a popular tercentenary tribute
to "our Shakspeare" the scheme is to be commended and was as such
approved.