The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1894-12-29 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

BLUE BEARD" AT MIDDLES BROUGH.  Successful pantomime nowadays is not a thing of easy achievement. In bygone times the Christmas annual was not the difficult and costly undertaking of to-day. Formerly • good book, plenty of topical songs, local hits, grotesque properties, ambitious scenic effects, and coarse jokes did very well. Progress in every department of stage art has been made, and the public insists moat unmistakably upon its privilege in this reeper.t, making theatre management a somewhat ticklish bu.iness. Critical audiences, exacting and sometimes annoyingly discerning audiences, have to be considered. Intelligent audiences from gallery to pit are the rule and not the exception now,and they are only quick to plea-s when they see really capable actors and perforwances genuinely smart. Everyone must recognise the advantage of this, and Northern theatre managers undoubtedly have ; welcomed the change. Messrs George and Charles Inie.son, of Middlesbrough, ate to be congratulated upon the success of their latest pantomime which Messrs Dottridge and Longden, honoured names in the profession, have produced for them. Last Saturday night's presentation of "Blue Beard" W a credit to any management, or to any company. Good taste and exteptional talent go a long way on the road towards success, but the ease and finish of the perfoimance was ; really the result of hard work and close attention to rehearsals. Some little reference to the story ' may not be without interest. The tale of the merciless tyrant who killed his wives is known to every child. As to who the despot was, however. we are not so well informed. Charles Perrault first told the story in "Contes du Temps." Some consider the original  A SATIRE ON AN ENGLISH KING; others that it is meant to typify castle lords in days of knight-errantry. Tn 1440 the Marquis de . Laval, Giles de Rats, of Brittany, was accused of murdering six of Jiis seven wives. Be was I strangled and burnt. Most probably this was the fact upon which the story was first founded. This will sulfite to show how closely the text of the old fairy tale, over which an Oriental glamour has been cast, is followed in the Pantomime which Mr W. 11. Risque has written. The Blue Chamber soene is excellent, and no doubt it is intended to typify conse.enee. This is what Carlyle meant when he said, "the Blue Beard chamber of his mind, into which no eye but his own must look." The libretto is good, and as the dialogue is mostly in prose it secures attention. The motto of Mr Risque has been "rhyme in reason," for it is I seldom introduced after the opening scene, where of course it is essential There are no monotonous monologues, and the smartness of the story will be made more evident as the artistes settle down to their work, and their Patrons become familiar with "the book," for few can properly follow a pantomime on first seeing it. The scenery is the work of experi. enced scenic artistes, and bears evidence of having I een carefully sketched and portrayed in a different medium before being transferred to cloth. Both in conception, drawing, and colour such scenes as "A ltreet in Bagdad," "The 'Witt* Kitchen," "An Antechamber," " The Palace Gardens," and "The Blue Chamber," are examples of what this depm tment of stage craft should be. They carry