LONG TACK SAM TROUPE.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 17990, 6 February 1924, Page 7

LONG TACK SAM TROUPE.

AT GREATER CRYSTAL PALACE. Long Tack Sam, the man responsible for the biggest novelty act ever brought to New Zealand, and who is to appear in it at Greater Crystal Palace on Saturday, throws some interesting sidelights on the art. Tho Chinese magician undergoes long and arduous training, for ho' begins as a small child to learn tho tricks and intricacies of one of the oldest entertainments of tha world, which have been handed down from father to son throughout generations. Ho studios until he reaches manhood as keenly as a. European studying law or medicine. Even when he obtains his certificate of graduation his path is not a rosy one, for it is then that he makes his appearance in the streets of China until he receives the endorsement of the public, which permits him to show in the biggest theatres r-nd the palaces of tho mandarins. Fa. sheer showmanship, Long Tack Sam's act has probably never been equalled in New Zealand. This does not imply that his stunts and those of his twelve assistants need extraneous devices to make them go. In themselves they are wonderfully clean bits of juggling, acrobatics, gymnastics, plate spinning, and all the other things in which the Oriental excels. But tho gorgeous Chinese setting, dressing, and arranging of tho act, and tho genial personality of Sam himself (he has little of the Eastern inscrutability) lift Gic whole thing out of tho merely clever into the brilliant—if tho term can 1)6 applied to physical prowes3. Capping it all is the extraordinary work of two of them on the horizontal bar. These men seem to havo shaped tho laws of centrifugal force to their own ends.