City and Suburban
THE Wood Green Empire is now shut. It was an Edwardian terra-cotta marvel, a somewhat less expensive version of the Hackney Empire. It is sometimes sup- posed that television is killing variety theatres, but I do not think this is true. A member of the Variety Artistes' Federa- tion told me that Saturdays, which are the peak nights for television audiences, are also the nights when variety theatres do best. If anything, television and wireless are driving people to the theatres because they like to see flesh and blood for a change. I think it is the microphone which has done infinite damage to variety theatres, as it distorts the voices of the performers and kills their personalities. Only when a supreme artiste like Bud Flanagan uses it, who treats the microphone as a joke and exploits its ridiculousness, do we get back that intimate relationship between artiste and audience which was the soul of variety.
PRIVATE LAMP-POSTS
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