RIPPING SHOW...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 762, 26 February 1954, Page 5

RIPPING SHOW...

But What Brazen Assurance!

UST as I can never see Antony and Cleopatra (even when superbly done as it was by the Stratford Memorial Company last year) without remembering the night at His Majesty’s Theatre, Auckland, more than 20 years ago, when the first actor to stride on to the stage forgot his lines, twice failed to hear the whispered reminder, and finally had to be prompted so loudly that everyone in the stalls heard it, so I shall not be able to see Carmen again without remembering the night at Sadler’s Wells when the curtain was hastily rung down, Everyone agreed that it was a ripping show, and, as you might expect, it was a woman who started it all. The opera was going splendidly until Carmen threw that fatal rose to Don José, played by the 32-year-old tenor Robert Thomas. One does not have to be an opera-goer to know that no woman can be relied on to throw anything accurately at a man, unless it is

herself. This throw went wide and, as Mr. Thomas later said: "IT made rather a long stretch to pick the rose up and the trousers must have gone then. I did not know they had gone, but I felt a draught." He said that it reminded him of a Rugby match-he does, in fact, play Rugby-but without the encircling protection of his team mates, the stage seemed suddenly as vast as a football field. There was a hasty exit as the curtain came quickly down and the producer, Gavin Gordon, announced that the tenor had had "an unfortunate accident and would resume as soon as possible." For Mr. Thomas back stage, this was no time for badinage; a bandage might have been more appropriate. He refused to return. with the insecure aid of pins-no new trousers, no aria, Four minutes later he was back again before an audience in which the husbands, unwilling attendants on their culture-conscious wives, were awake

enough to enjoy the next development. The tenor’s first song was: "What a look, what a brazen assurance .. .-" The audience loved that, too. Laughter and applause again delayed the performance. =. ad Moral for Marxists If there’s a moral in that about being tempted by red roses and fair words, the Comrades can be expected to make the most of it. There’s an all-red-roubles party line on. the subject of trousers. It is not long since the London Daily Worker published a letter declaring: "Throughout the capitalist world today you will see working men apeing the bourgeoisie by wearing trousers-those symbols of the inequality of women. Not only evening dress, but trousers, too, will disappear under Socialism. "JT am already designing a tasteful blanket suitable for both sexes. It is irreproachable in having no shape at all," Such a uniform-presumably grey for the proletariat and red for commissars -might not stop Communists having their legs pulled, but it would rob Carmen of the joyful anticipation it has

nOw acquired.

J. W.

GOODWIN

(London) . |