The Chinese Theatre.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 89, 14 February 1885, Page 5

The Chinese Theatre.

The Chinese theatre is perhaps seen at its best in tho ovening. What pushing and chattering and quarrelling there is. to bo sure, as you make your way through the Celestials who throng tho box-oflice. The box-office, too, with its little pigeon holes, seems rather small for tho purpose. But as the Chinese always bring tho exact sum, no change is necessary, and everything moves with admirable despatch. You have probably engaged a box, or " room," as the Chinese call it, and, as your name has been posted up conspicuously upon it, there is no chance of mistake. The stage is ablaze with brilliant costumes of red and gold. The lights from the iron chandeliers flare heavily in tho draught. Processions of armies, emperors, statesmen, and generals onter in rapid succession through a redcurtained door on one side, and pass out through a red-curtained door on the other. Now tho Emperor is holding an audienco The next moment his troops are engaged in bitter combat with tho retainers of some unruly vassel. Every species of crime, every form of human passion, is crowded into the brief moment of tho llceting scene. A messenger from heaven, standing on a chair, delivering his high summons to a fairy fish, is next presented to your confused imagination. Then, whirling in angry passion, a painted-face king, pulling his feathers fiercely, and loudly threatening all manner of dreadfu lthing?, Ther orchestra keeps up its infernal din. In shrill falsotto the characters sing through a sort of highpitched recitative. Presently you paas down behind the stage, through the paintroom, where an actor is making himself as ugly as vermillion and number can well do it ; then by a narrow stairway down to the dressing-room, rich in its very confusion, and strown around with costly brocades and satins wherever tho convenience of the last actor had left them. It is not long before you find yourself standing on the stage, so near the actoi'3, too, that tho Emperor's robes touch you as ho sweeps superbly by. Then you are hurried back to your box again, where it i 3 explained to you that the fighting is still going on, and that So-and-so has killed So and-so and is off on horseback. You leave the theatre of the oldest people in the world with a confused idea of the plot, burlesqued by your interpreter, and still more highly coloured by your heated imagination, with the blare of the trumpet and the strident wail of the fiddle in your ears, with the smell of all Chinatown in your nostrils, with a headache, perhaps, but with little added to your stock of information. — ct The Contury."