COMPANY STRANDED

Hokitika Guardian, 6 July 1929, Page 6

COMPANY STRANDED

TENT THAT DID NOT ARRIVE IN

TIME

BERLIN, May 16. A theatrical company of 250 members, including 150 ballot girls, isstranded, penniless, at Magdeburg, 70 miles west of Berlin. .For three weeks the players rehearsed in the capital, and on Whit Sunday the first performance of their revue was to be given in a circus tent at Magdeburg. Tickets sold briskly, and the manager netted some £250. The tent, however, did not arrive from Berlin until the Sunday morning, and the 50 unemployed workmen who had been engaged to put it up had not the remotest idea of how to go about it. The result was that there could be lio performance, and the ticket-holders who wanted their money back could not get it because the manager had disappeared with the cash. On Monday the tent was last erected and the company decided to give a performance. The players had to dress and luakc up in dark furniture vans, and when they came lie fore the audience the appearance of them was so odd and the performance so b'ad that there .was an uproar. The spectators demanded their money back. The ballet girls, some of whom were only 16 years of age, were in tears, and their hunger drove them to beg in the streets of Magdeburg.