Melodrama Thrills London Audience

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 170, 8 October 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Melodrama Thrills London Audience

“MARIA MARTIN” REVIVED EXECUTION ON THE STAGE with slow music, thunder and lightning, and a realistic execution , the famous melodrama of “Maria Martin, or The Murder in the Red Barn” has been revived once more in London, where it has not been seen for many years. It was played at the Elephant Theatre, the home of the transpontine drama, and it was received with as much joy by the enthusiastic patrons of that happy treatre as it was when it was produced in London 50 years ago or more. Tightly packed in the high-pitched 6d gallery with the fish-tail gas jets burning in wire cages on the wall behind them, the audience of humble men and women, some with babies in their arms, leaned forward drinking in the rich sentiment and fiery passion of the play upon the stage. How they hated the oily love-making of the villain, William Corder; how they pitied his wretched victim, Maria Martin; how they laughed at the bucolic courtship of Tim Bobbin, the yokel in his smock; how they wept for Dame Martin when her daughter disappeared, says a London writer. SHOT AND BURIED When the murder scene was enacted the audience was almost on tip-toe w’ith excitement. William Corder was seen digging a grave in the Red Barn and throwing real earth on to the stage. Lightning flashed at the windows; thunder rumbled. Poor Maria came in. William flung her to the ground. She struck him on the head with a spade and tried to escape. Throwing her back, he shot her with his pistol, lowered her body into the grave, and threw earth upon her corpse. The audience loved this blood and thunder drama and went to the bars with happy hearts to regale themselves with stout to strengthen them for the full appreciation of the final tit-bit—-the execution.

This exceeded their wildest expectations. After murders, executions are probably one of the most popular topics of conversation with many Londoners, and last night on the stage they saw William Corder hanged before their very e3 r es. “WASN'T IT LOVELY?” After an agonising scene in the condemned cell he was taken to the scaffold. With the gallows above him and the rope about his neck he stood on a platform, his hands pinioned to his side. A white bag was put over his head, and the executioner —a gipsy whom he had wronged and who had gladly volunteered to act in the capacity in an emergency—said in ringing voice: “E3*e to eye; tooth to tooth; blood to blood! ” The trap opened and the murderer dropped out of sight like a plummet, and the rope gave a sickenening jerk. “Wasn’t it lovely!” sighed a woman with a shawl round her shoulder, standing up very slowly so that she should not wake the baby fast asleep in her arms.

; Melbourne they celebrated the 25th ani niversary of their wedding. It was t as members of the profession that ? they first met. Since their marriage I it has been their happy lot always to l. be associated in the same production. : Mr. and Mrs. Belmore are English. r The only member of the company who } is American is Maury Tuckerman, who l plays “the big Swede.” __