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THE THEATRE.. • * \h h • ■“ Joan of Arc ” at the Gaiety.All opera, taken seriously, is an absurdity; but in opera bouffe the absurdity is lessened by being accentuated. Comic opera, it might be maintained, has helped to fight the battle of Wagner against the Italian forms and formulas. It has shown us that arias, ballets, and the rest are in tHeir place in a farce, a travesty, and nowhere else. It has shown us that what we have been taking seriously is simply part of a musical joke. And so at last the most scrupulous amateur of high art—provided he have some share of humour—can enjoy with perfect equanimity the incoherences of an unmeaning story, parenthetically, associated with1 aiiy' number of tunefully, meaningless melodies. In 41 Jean of Arc,’’ of which the second and revised edition was brought out at the Gaiety last night, Messrs. J. L. Shine and Adrian Ross have not, of course, tried to burden the music of Mr. Osmond Carr with more plot, than it can easily carry, The tunes are there, some of them very pretty; and the words are there, some of them rather funny. Better still, the singers are there; „and, best of all, the dancers. For to the discriminating lover of the Gaiety it is not the fun of the words or the prettiuess of the tunes that constitute the chief charm of that popular theatre. It is the dancing. The Gaiety would have sufficiently justified its existence if it had merely served as a’ dancing-floof for the bewitching feet of ,Miss Letty Lind, Miss Lind has, it is true, no second—-not even Miss Sylvia Grey; but the Gaiety is never without its agile or exquisite dancers. In “Joan of Arc Miss Al|ce Lethbridge has a delightful fas seul (one of the new numbers), the only fault of which was a slight appearance of hurry; and she takes part, and is certainly the most graceful, in a pas de trois. Miss Katie Seymour, who used to dance so prettily at the music-halls, now dances more prettily still in a. pas seal, a pas de deax (her cleverest, performance), and a fas de tiois. piss, Lethbridge is really the more graceful of the two, but Miss Seymour is the more piquant. There is some clever grotesque dancing by Mr. W. Warde.I The singing, as in the first edition, was not remarkable. Miss Marion Hood is a beautiful Joan of Arc, but her voice is not particularly good; and she has an unfortunate trick of drawing her mouth on one side when she sings, apparently with the idea of getting more sound. Miss Florence Dysart, as* the Queen, sings a little better. Mr. Arthur Rdberts is as fine a low comedian as ever, and his new song, “ Randy, 01 was the hit of the evening. Mr. F. EmneyJ as the lather of Joan pf Arc, and M. Marius, as, the King, were both amusing. As a spectacle the play leaves something to be desired; the costumes, in particular, are but second-rate. What is really delightful in the piece, now so happily revised and enlarged, is the dancing; and it is enough to say that that is worthy of the Gaiety. *
Newspaper Details
London St James Gazette
London, Middlesex, GB
Thu, Oct 01, 1891
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Nick N.
NA, 14 Nov 2023
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