Omaha daily bee., 1908-11-29
BOOM IN LONDON SNOW BUSINESS
Plays Running In English Metropolis
Are Doing a House FULL"

Plays Running In English Metropolis
Are Doing n House Full"
LONDON, Nov. 2S@Special Correspond
ence.)-At the beginning of the present
theatrical year London managers were
viewing with apprehension the opening OF
the Franco British exhibition and the
threatened inroads into their business.
Now that II is all over the same managers
are wearing smiles that won't disappear.
The cause Of this strange change Of front
is that the year now drawing to a close
has, in the words OF one of them, been
zone OF the best years | have ever known
from a box office viewpoint" And after
all, what other viewpoint worries a man
ager of today? With a very few excep-
tons ali the London houses are doing a
''house-fun" business and. in many cases,
the advance bookings extend far into Feb
ruary.
As an evidence Of this general pros
perity, take the case of the Drury Lane
pantomime. the first performance of which
does not take place until the day AFTER
Christmas. Tickets. however, have been
on sale for about a week and already
more than $4,000 worth of them have been
disposed Of. Advance bookings for Peter
Pan" which is 10 be the special Christmas
attraction at the Duke of York's, amount
to $4,000, while $3.50 worth of seats were
sold in advance for the two recent per-
formances of "The Only Way which
Martin Harvey gave at the Adelphi.
50 exceptionally good is the business
that almost anything goes, especially in
the way of musical comedy, The Belle
of Brittany" which is now playing to big
houses at the Queens, was universally
condemned on the first night as a footless,
aimless, meritless sort of thing, yet the
various libraries in London who deal in
theater tickets Immediately invested some
thing like $4,000 in seats and have had
no reason to regret their expenditure to
date. This strange success, however, may
in part be accounted for by the extraor-
binary good cast which was provided by
the producer, Robert Courtneide, Henry
Savage's partner in London. All the evil
dence points towards the conclusion that
he knew he had a weak piece and de-
liherately determined to save the day with
a strong cast. In no other way can one
explain his enormous weekly payroll, for
Mr.. Courtneidge is a canny Scotsman and
never throws his money away.
In the first place, the cast includes
George Graves, the Baron Pupoff, of "The
Merry Widow" and probably the finest
musical comedy comedian I'm England.
Next, is Ruth Vincent, the old S%avoyard,
who really has a voice and knows how to
use it, and who is undoubtedly the high
est paid singer in musical comedy here.
Number three is Walter Passmore, another
old Savoyard, and a favorite of the Drury
Lane pantomime. AS he has been com
PEELED to give up all idea OF appearing in
this years pantomime at the Drury Lane.
1t is reasonable to assume that he was
not procured by Courtneidge without a
liberal expenditure of money. Next Is
Laurence Rea, who has been appearing
at Covent Garden. and one might extend
the list of stars and near-stars consider
ably SO as to include several well known
on this side, but with whom you would be
unfamiliar.
There be those who see In the weakness
of The Belle of Brittany as a play an
indictment of the growing practice of ask
ing a long list Of playwrights, lyric writers,
composers and song writers to collaborate
in a production. THE Belle of Brittany"
boasts no less than five. The book was
written by p. ]. Barrow and Leedham
Bantock, the lyrics by Percy Green
bank, while Howard Talbot and Miss Marie
Horne confess to having composed the
music.
From the latest information which has
reached me poor "Salome' appears to have
had a very rough time of 1t in Russia. One
would suppose that Russia with its SHOWS
and its ice would have been the last place
In the world for "Salome% and her pocket
edition costume. But she bobbed up in st.
Petersburg and had a tussle. not with the
head of John the Baptist, but with the
holy synod. That body on first considera-
ton forbade the perfc finance on the grounds
that 1t was blasphemous, but upon more
mature thought, involving, l should say, no
little plental gymnastics, 1t relented and
gave permission for the production If Sa-
lone were transformed into an Indian
queen, If John the Baptist's head were made
the corpse of a king and If Salome's dances
were performed by the queen and her
danes. some alchemist of the drama duly
accomplished these miracles and the first
public performance was we'll under way
when the holy synod changed It's mind
again. The police marched into the theater,
stopped the play and turned the audience
out-without, l may add, returning their
money.
I suppose since Frank Gotch has become
an actor he Is a legitimate subject for the
- - % pAANoEOAhtAAls . ~
any rate here goes, He opeued at the New
Cross Empire last week and this week is at
Shepherds Bush Empire. He got a much
better reception than l thought possible in
view of the opinion on this side of the
merits of his match with Hackenschmidt
Hack" is more or less of an English idol
and you cannot convince a Britisher that
Gotch really licked him fairly and squarely,
But they seemed determined to give the
Iowa man a fair hearing, and while nc
wild enthusiasm greeted his appearance
here, at the same time he got a good re.
~ception, His idea OF appearing in a sketch
instead of in a series of wrestling bouts
|, as Hack and zbysco have been doing, strucl
the English public as a novelty and pleased
them accordingly. Goteh is booked foi
; eighteen weeks and will travel to the nortl
E OF England before making his appearance,
? In the heart OF London.
1 Carrie De Mar is booked for the Coliseum
. in the near future. 1t is announced tina.
I she will appear In both Lonesome Floss
e and "Winking Winnie" Cissie LOTUS /,
still topping the bill at the same house witt