"Puss in Boots."
If Messrs. SIMS, DIX and COLLINS did in fact, as they claim, make the
book of this year's pantomime at the Lane, Mr. GEORGE GRAVES gagged and
bound it. This popular annual festival indeed tends to become more and
more of a GRAVES solo (with of course the innumerable customary _da
capos_) and a bright sketchy EVANS _obbligato_. As a Grand Duchess and
Duke respectively the genial twain present themselves. Mr. GEORGE
GRAVES, in a flounced skirt of green tartan check, copper curls and
mahogany features, is a delectable creation; says some strangely
unlady-like things (as is expected of him); is still oddly preoccupied
with "gear-boxes" and other anatomical detail; and generally indulges in
a fine careless rapture of reminiscence and improvisation--zealously
assisted by Mr. WILL EVANS' familiar tip-tilted nose and bland refusal
to be perturbed by entirely unrehearsed effects and obviously irregular
cues. A jovial and irreverent pair of potentates, crowned by public
laughter.
There is, of course, a sort of background to all this audacious fooling,
more definitely directed _virginibus puerisque_. The new principal boy,
Mr. ERIC MARSHALL, woos his princess with a romantic air and a mellow
tenor, in which emotion somewhat overshadows tone. Miss FLORENCE
SMITHSON, an accepted Drury Lane favourite, looks very charming, makes
love in pretty kitten wise and still indulges in those queer harmonics
of hers--virtuosity rather than artistry, shall we call it?--but is
altogether quite a nice princess of pantomime. Little RENÉE MAYER is the
Puss. Nothing could well be daintier. But I hope she will let me tell
her (in a whisper, so that the others won't hear), that she doesn't
_quite_ realise what a jolly part she has got. I would implore her to
spend an hour or two at serious play with any decent young cat and study
the grace and variety of its beautiful, imitable gestures. Then she will
assuredly pounce on her magician turned mouse, and fawn on her master
and friends, with a greater air of conviction. And she will mightily
please all the other nice children in the house.
Of the great _ensemble_ scenes unquestionably the finest was the Fairy
Garden, with a quite beautiful back-cloth by R. MCCLEERY and a
bewildering (and, to tell truth, largely bewildered) bevy of
butterflies, decked by COMELLI, fluttering in a flowery pleasaunce. And
there was also a clever variation on the now inevitable staircase
_motif_ as a _finale_. But the Harlequinade of happy memory has
deplorably declined to something like a mere display of
advertisements--a sad business.
* * * * *
"The Starlight Express."
It would be uncandid to pretend that Mr. ALGERNON BLACKWOOD gets
everything he has to say in _The Starlight Express_ safely across the
footlights--those fateful barriers that trap so many excellent
intentions. But he so evidently _has_ something to say, and the saying
is so gallantly attempted, that he must emphatically be credited with
something done--something rather well done really. The little play has
beautiful moments--and that is to say a great deal.
This novelist turned playwright wishes to make you see that "the Earth's
forgotten it's a Star." In plainer words he wants to present you with a
cure for "wumbledness." People who look at the black side of things, who
think chiefly of themselves--these are the wumbled. The cure is
star-dust--which is sympathy. The treatment was discovered by the
children of a poor author in a cheap Swiss _pension_ and by
"Cousinenry," a successful business man of a quite unusual sort. You
have to get out into the cave where the starlight is stored, gather
it--with the help of the Organ Grinder, who loves all children and sings
his cheery way to the stars; and the Gardener, who makes good things
grow and plucks up all weeds; and the Lamplighter, who lights up heads
and hearts and stars impartially; and the Sweep, who sweeps away all
blacks and blues over the edge of the world, and the Dustman, with his
sack of Dream-dust that is Star-dust (or isn't it?), and so forth. Then
you sprinkle the precious stuff on people, and they become miracles of
content and unselfishness. (The fact that life isn't in the very least
like that is a thing you have just got to make yourself forget for three
hours or so.)
The author was well served by his associates. Sir EDWARD ELGAR wove a
delightfully patterned music of mysterious import through the queer
tangle of the scenes and gave us an atmosphere loaded with the finest
star-dust. Lighting and setting were admirably contrived; and the
grouping of the little prologue scenes, where that kindly handsome giant
of an organ-grinder (Mr. CHARLES MOTT), with the superbly cut corduroys,
sang so tunefully to as sweet a flock of little maids as one could wish
to see, was particularly effective.
Of the players I would especially commend the delicately sensitive
performance of Miss MERCIA CAMERON (a name and talent quite new to me)
as _Jane Anne_, the chief opponent of wumbledom. She was, I think,
responsible more than any other for getting some of the mystery of the
authentic Black-woodcraft across to the audience. The jolly spontaneity
of RONALD HAMMOND as young _Bimbo_ was a pleasant thing, and ELISE HALL,
concealing less successfully her careful training in the part, prettily
co-operated as his sister _Monkey_. The part of _Daddy_, the congested
author who was either "going to light the world or burst," was in O. B.
CLARENCE'S clever sympathetic hands. Mr. OWEN ROUGHWOOD gave you a sense
of his belief in the efficacy of star-dust. On what a difficult rail our
author was occasionally driving his express you may judge when he makes
this excellent but not particularly fragile British type exclaim, "I am
melting down in dew." The flippant hearer had always to be inhibiting
irreverent speculations occasioned by such speeches.
I couldn't guess if the children in the audience liked it. I hope they
didn't feel they had been spoofed, as MAETERLINCK so basely spoofed them
in _The Blue Bird_, by offering them a grown-ups' play "sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of thought." But the bigger children gave the piece a
good welcome, and called and acclaimed the shrinking author. T.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Princess Rosabel_ ... Miss Florence Smithson. _Florian_
... Mr. Eric Marshall.
_Princess Rosabel_ and _Florian_, a young man--though only a miller's
son--of considerable polish, especially about the hair and feet.]
* * * * *
"36 Magnificent, Acclimatised, Well-bred Dairy Cows, &c. Many of
these were bred on the Premises, and others were purchased from
a renowned Breeder of Friesland Cattle, and they need no comment
from the Auctioneers, but will speak for themselves."
_Natal Mercury._
Blowing their own horns, so to speak.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Irish Sergeant._ "Keep yer head down there! Don't ye
know that's the very place that Mike Rooney was shot through the fut?"]
* * * * *