THE CELEBRATED VERMONT TROUPE,

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1241, 8 January 1883, Page 2

THE CELEBRATED VERMONT TROUPE,

We thought the Standard was sometimes warm, but the “ Waipawa Mail” is equally as hot. It says:—-The “Celebrated Vermont Troupe” may consider itself “ teetotally busted up, ■’ and all its prospects for ever blighted so far as Waipawa is concerned. This wonderful combination of infernal impudence and hopless uselessness advertised itself to appear on the evening of New Year’s Day, at the Oddfellows’ Hall, and go through a variety entertainment Consisting of “ songs, dances, side splitting farces, &c.” Several atrociously. executed pictures stuck about, &;nd a report that the “ Celebrated Vermont, .fee,,” had left a whole continent desolate by rushing away frofa crowded houses in Sydney to come and delight the people in Waipawa, coupled with the fact that the prices of admission were fixed at 3s and 2b, had prepared the public m .nd for something extraordinary, It is only fair to admit that the public mind was not deceived—it did undoubtedly get something extraordinary. From the first time the curtain was raised till it fell finally (when the “ troupe ’ locked itself in the dressing room while the police cleared the hall) the performance was one long surprise—the chief item in the wonderment being a lurking disappointment that 200 outraged visitors didn’t

laugh themselves into apoplexy at the “ side-splitting farce” of sitting to watch (at 3s and 2s per head) the inane antics of four male bipeds, apparently better fitted for lob-lollying in a boiling-down factory than posing as a “ troupe.” The “performance,” or whatever it should be called, that this “troupe” went through was so astounding, that at last a few of the audience obtained from somewhere some strongly-smelling eggs, and these in the middle of an astounding piece of elocution, were “fired.” Then there was a rush of the “ troupe” into the dressing room, which was afterwards locked, the curtain fell, the police cleared the hall, and one of the most comical episodes that ever happened in Waipawa came to end. The “ troupe” were to have “ played” at Waipukurau on the following evening, but could not brazen out another triumph, and so cleared by the next morning's train.