THE SHOW BECKONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 519, 23 November 1928, Page 8

THE SHOW BECKONS

PLAYWRIGHTS and theatrical producers must sometimes wonder enviously what secret it is that gives shows and public gala days their popularity.- The longing to capture it, this key to consistent support, must sometimes take possession of them. llut such a key cannot be moulded from artificial settings. The truth is, shows win, with a minimum of what the producer terms “flops,” because they have an association with everyday work and ideas. The show does not present exalted features above the heads of the people. Its displays are the products of the home, the workshop, the farm; and heartily though we may affect to dislike and despise our daily toil, our pretty pretences break down before the best forms of its expression, and the human sentiments of curiosity- and admiration kindle that ingenuous interest which explains the popularity of shows for generations. “The show!” What memories and pictures it calls before us! We may not still regard it with the rapt fascination of childhood, when the showman was a Wizard, and the flags that waved above him spoke of gallantry and high adventure; and the snufflingbeeves behind their tinted tickets were monsters of menacing shape.. Those days may have fallen behind, but there is still a younger generation filled with the same freshndss and the. same glorious illusions. But having grown up, we still cannot reject the appeal of the show. Wc And ourselves regarding some mountain of pork, and assume an air of intense wisdom. The stock, the home industries, the horses, the dogf—they engage our attention, we discourse learnedly, and the hours slip by in quick procession. It is something to Auckland’s credit that, immersed in the business of making itself a city, with commerce and industrialism to occupy its time, it lias not forgotten the pastures and the plough. The show that opened in a blaze of sunshine to-day is called the jubilee show, but it is really of more ancient lineage, nearly one hundred years. If it helps us to maintain the spirit of the ’forties, when it was founded, it will never fail in its work.