Shadowland (Mar-Aug 1923)

On a foggy evening near Covent Garden Market Brown Side-Shows on the Other Side I: LONDON AFTER DARK B;y Henry Albert Phillips WHEN I had safely arrived inside the box, I discreetly looked the "gift-horse" in the mouth — for the ticket had been presented to me — and found that the stub had "$5.50" brazenly printed across the face of it. What large gold-filled teeth the gift-horse had! That set me to reflecting upon the last occasion I had seen this same Chauve-Souris — paying a little less than eleven cents (including the penny War Tax). I made up my mind to detect where the difference of more than five dollars between the two shows came in. I exposed my funny-bone to the grotesque blows of Balieff's uncouth English ; I swayed back and forth to the captivating rhythm of the Wooden Soldiers ; and I opened the window of my imagination to the tinkling charm of Katrinka — but I failed to get the original eleven-cent kick out of it. Why had I been entertained, by almost the same bill, more at one time than at another? Of what does entertainment consist, anyway? Can entertainment be like a pretty lady who becomes even more charming in proportion as she is decked out in the stuff of which Dreams are made, surrounded by the glamor of Romance and given the air of Makebelieve ? T had seen Chauve-Souris on the former occasion in -* London at the Coliseum — one of the famous Music 'Alls, as they call their vaudeville houses. I had been in London just a day, after an interval of years. I had dined in Soho, chatted a few minutes with a Bobby in Piccadilly Circus, and then taken a stroll thru foggy AVhitehall, all the way down to the Houses of Parliament, the towers of which, together with the spires of the Abbey, gave a fairy-castle substance to my mood. As Big Ben boomed seven, I hurried back to the Coliseum and took my place in line for the six-penny seats in the gallery. So you see I took my vision of London inside with me and saw the incomparable Russian show thru its iridescent haze. There was a considerable bill in addition to ChauveSouris — mostly rough comedy. I couldn't tell you what it was all about, but a tragedy interposed itself. A neat, pretty little woman sat just in front of me with her husband. Their Cockney conversation revealed that they came from Whitechapel. Gradually her careworn face came to reflect the Make-believe, and if her man had cared to look he would have found beside him the girl he had married a few years before. But the man had another love. Every now and again he had been slipping out to the "pub" connected with the theater, stumbling back reeking with gin. By the time Chauve-Souris had been succeeded by the comedy stuff, she was weeping, and he was cursing her and twisting her arm. Glorious Makebelieve had been ripped away and stark Realism mocked the little woman. Slap-stick Comedy had vanished and grim Tragedy sat beside her. Finally, the brute jerked her out of the theater. . . . Her holiday was over. I wonder what her impression of the entertainment was? Yet I am not so sure that the more wonderful Show had not taken place down there in the streets before I went into the theater at all. It had all the elements of good vaudeville entertainment, interpolated with comic, tragic and epic moments. The performers were derelicts — derelicts of the War in the' main. For as we stood in line there for a half hour or so, waiting for the doors to open to the cheap seats, we were audience to a drama Page Forty-Eight