Life — May 24, 1894 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SPRING OFFERINGS. T the Broadway Theatre we have “ Ta- F basco,” for which there is this much to be said: It is worse than a good many comic operas pro- duced before the New York public, and it is not so bad as a good many others, It belongs along somewhere in that middle section of productions whose merits depend entirely upon the mental make-up and physical condition of the spectator. If you are simple- minded, not over-critical, and happen to be feeling well, you are likely to find “ Tabasco” funny and pleasing. If you insist that a comic opera shall be comic throughout and free from chest- nuts, if your musical taste demands something more than the commonplace, and if your dinner does not happen to have agreed with you, you are likely to come away with the idea that “ Tabasco" is rather dreary. Mr. Thomas Q. Seabrooke, the star of the production, is a clever comedian, and makes the most of the material at his command. His librettist has not been generous in the opportunities afforded to Mr. Seabrooke to be funny, and judging by the chestnutty gags provided for Mr. Otis Harlan, it is perhaps well that it is left to Mr. Seabrooke’s own brains to fatten the part with fun as it grows older. The Lo Bengula: LAST NIGHT? Young-man-afraid-of-the-soap : AWFUL SAD. Do you KNOW THAT THE BeaRneD Lapy piED Yes, | HEARD aBouT IT, It’s SNE LEFT A WIFE AND THREE CHILDREN, HE FOOLISHLY OFFERS TO HOLD THE BABY FOR A MOMENT UNTIL SHE RETURNS. support is above the average, especial credit being due to Mr. Walter Allen, who impersonates the usual comic-opera oriental-king-with-a-harem. Miss Elvia Crox is a shapely and graceful young person, for whom it might be possible to prophesy a good future in this line of work if it were made a condition that she should abbreviate her too evident idea of her own importance. . . . $¢ /* UDGEONS,” at the Empire, is a frothy importation which comes very near being a successful comedy. The motive of the piece is that characteristic of some high- born Britons which makes almost any way of gaining a live- lihood seem preferable to actual, honest work. In this instance the particular Briton is James Ffollfott Treherne, Esquire, untitled, but with the assumed snobbish manner of three or four dukes, earls and cads. The play candidly shows that the cad part is genuine. The proposed * gudgeons ” are naturally Americans—con- fiding father, newly rich, and marriageable daughter. This is a lovely type that our glorious nation has furnished the satirists of the old world, and, frankly, we think the constant use they make of the material is not bad for us as a people. The more the national type of jackass is held up to ridicule the more quickly we recognize him and his family as being our own special production and the sooner he is apt to become extinct. In this case the dramatists have been very lenient and have rather glorified than ridiculed him. They make Howard R. Harrison a simple old parvenu with a weakness for indulging his daughter Pers/‘s, who seems to have some vague craving to be introduced in English society. All they see of it is the broken-down 7reherne outfit and Reginald Ffolliott, a young Englishman of the better sort comicbooks.com