The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-07-11


 Dissolve us in pleasure, and soft Re-
 pose.'
 Then comes the real musical comedy hero touch--the hero surrounded by a beauty chorus-brought about by lit- tie more suddenly than in these polite days. q must have women" cries the hero. There is nothing unbends the mind like them" The ladies' he had sent for are then introduced, and beau tiful ladies they are at Hammersmith. and of better voice and graces than your average musical comedy beauty chorus Each one is received with ap- propriate reminders and salutations. They dance cotillon on theseiwords: Youths the Season made for Joys. Love is then our Duty, She alone who that Employs. | Well deserves her Beauty. Let's be Gay, While we may, Beautys flower desps'd in decay.
 Let us drink and sport, today, Ours is not tomorrow. Love with youth flies swift away. Age is naught but Sorrow. l Dance and Sing. Time s on the NlnR, Life never knows thy Return of Spring. i They brag of each others accomplish ments Jenny Biver seeming to be the | most accomplished of all. for though | her fellow be never so agreeable, she can pick his pocket as coolly as if
 money were her only lpeasure.." That l is a command of the passions uncom- 1 mon in q woman" comments Mrs. Coaxer.
 With these enchantresses Macheath f and Jenny sing the kind of appropriate te 1 song to be found in every musical com l edy at this point in the play: l Before the BarnDoor growing, i The Cock by Hens attended, 1 His eyes around him throwing, l Stands for a while suspended, Then one he singles from the crew, l And cheers the happy Hen:
 With how do you do, and how do you do. And how do you do again." But Jenny. as Macheath ought to have known. is not there for mere pleasure. When he wants a kiss she proposes a game of blind mans buff. No sooner is the handkerchief over his eyes than Peachum and two constables appear and seize him and prepare to lead him off to Newgate and the gall lows on which he sings to d tragic measure:
 A. the tree I shall suffer with pleasure, At the tree I shall suffer with pleasure, Let me go where 1 will,
 In all kinds of i'll,
 I shall find no such furies as these are.
 ;yr~ lap heath has friend in his need-Lucy
 Lockit, the jailor's daughter. He has promised to marry her, and by the same token thinks he sees his way clear to con triye an escape But Lucy has heard all about Polly / she is indeed almost recon oiled to her lovers fate when her. father advises her to dS like other widows. buy herself weeds and be cheerful Sings he:
 You'll think ere many days ensue
 This sentence not severe;
 I hang your husband. child. tis true
 But with him hang your care. |. Left alone with her hero, however, she has just agreed at last that what love and money can do shall be done. when in rushes Polly crying: Where Is my dear husband twas a rope ever intended for this neck. Oh. let me throw my arms about 1t and throttle thee with love" The difference of opinion that then arises between the two ladies drives Macheath 10 sing this oft-qupted song: How happy could I be with either Were t other dear charmer away! But while you thus tcaze me together. To neither word will say: But tol de rol. etc. He plays them once against the other until the excitcment rises to lively duet.