THE THEATRE.
THE CO-OPTIMISTS AT THE PRINCE OF WALES' THEATRE.
THE Co-optimists' Sixth Programme has some really admirable songs and satires in it. But I suppose that it is in answer to a real demand that all pierrots sing sentimental songs which are worse than those which they satirize. Neverthe- less, this fact produces a sense of considerable muddle in the minds of earnest and well-meaning playgoers like me. We are so often in doubt when to laugh. For example, Mr. Stanley Holloway's songs, " The Cobbler " and the " Whistling Man," were in their quiet way quite as silly as " You're the Sort of Girl " song which Miss Phyllis Monkman and Mr. Laddie Cliff so excellently burlesqued.
But I do most earnestly recommend the following items to the public: Mr. Laddie Cliff's extremely funny Russian song " Olga Petrovotski " ; the pathetic and nervous Mr. Gilbert Child's endeavours to balance three billiard balls on the end of a billiard cue amid contretemps, and its happy ending ; the agreeably silly song and " effects " about the Luxor dis- coveries ; and Mr. Child's admirable satire on the worst sort of patriotic song, " The British Navy."
Very funny, too, is the Co-optimists' " Topical Gazette," which purports to be the usual bioscope with which variety entertainments are so often wound up. This one only shows the company in silhouette. There is the launch of ` s.s. Idiotic,' the scene in which " General Bonanza presents medals to his brave troops," and all the usual items of that often dreary and ridiculous type of entertainment.
The " Lerningham Repertory Company's " potted versions of Loyalties. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and East of Suez are most amusing, East of Suez being really a masterpiece, with Miss Betty Chester's amazingly good. acting and make-up
and Miss Monkman's excellent version of the Amah. - • TARN.
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