Some restorative music has now been applied to it
and the corpse has revived. Indeed there are the usual signs of another
long run. The trouble is that nearly all the cast at the Winter Garden
Theatre seem to think that, if the play is to run, they must run too. They
don't keep still for a moment, because they dare not. Even Mr. LESLIE
HENSON, whose fun would be more effective if he didn't try so hard, feels
that he must be at top pressure all the while with his face and his body
and his words. Yet he could well afford to keep some of his strength in
reserve, for he is a born humourist (in what one might perhaps call the
Golliwog vein). But, whether it is that he underrates his own powers or
that he can't contain himself, he keeps nothing in reserve; and the others,
less gifted, follow his lead. They persist in "pressing," as if they had no
confidence in their audience or their various authors or even themselves.
One is, of course, used to this with singers in musical comedy, who make a
point of turning the lyrics assigned to them into unintelligible patter.
Perhaps in the present case we lost little by that, though there was one
song (of which I actually heard the words) that seemed to me to contain the
elements of a sound and consoling philosophy.
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