ENTERTAINMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1052, 18 January 1913, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS.

THE GREAT JANSEN.

AMERICA’S GREATEST TRANSFORMIST.

On Monday and Tuesday nights Jansen and his company will perform in the Coronation Town Hall. A Welling-tou paper says : “The return to Wellington of the clever Jansen with his big budget of transformations was welcomed by a large and enthusiastic audience at the Opera House, Jansen is no ordinary trausformist. In those transformations which have distinguished him he has departed well from the beaten track, and has continued far beyond the point where so many cllicis have stopped. As a trausformist he is remarkably clever. He does everything neatly and quickly, and with the greatest ease, and act succeeds act with such rapidity that you lose count. The death chamber is one of the best of the mechanical perplexities, and mystified the audience as much as anything else Jansen did. Dressed as a gaoler, the trausformist is forced into an electrical chair, the certains are drawn and whilst the ladies look on in horrified expectancy, the current is switched on. Then the curtains are drawn back to disclose —not Jansen- By some strange means, and as it seemed In full view of the audience ail the lime, Jansen had contrived to j change characters with another person, for the audience discovered, after finding that nobody bad been electrocuted, that Jansen was on the stage before them, where he had been throughout. Another good transformation, wherein Jansen changes characters is performed with the aid of a couple of assistants. Jansen enters an apparently empty chest, draws a curtain, an assistant, covered with a cloth, immediately emerges. This is repeated, and then Jansen enters the case again. You see him- in the case, you see him draw the curtain, and then those who are covered on the stage rise. One of them is Jansen himself! How he got there, nobody can tell. The case is immediately examined, but it is empty. The lady who is the subject of the performance is duly hypnotised and placed on a couch. A cloth is thrown completely over her, and then, as if in answer to the will of the magician, she rises in the air. No support or lifting medium can be seen, and the delusion is heightened by Jansen passing a hoop across the floating figure. The audience looks on in wrapt amazement. The eyes that have served them so long have failed them at last, but they still hold firm to the belief in gravitation, and blink and strain, and squint in a vain endeavour to discover the modus opera ndi. Then the figure slowly sinks again. Jansen approaches, snatches away the cloth, and discloses —nothing. Just at the moment the audience had thought the trick over, the supreme poser was presented. These, however, are but a few’ of his acts. Throughout the entertainment he rains them down in rapid succession and the attention is never relaxed.” Box plan'at Town Clerk’s office.