Marie Lloyd (1870-1922)

"Dick Whittington"
Produced at the Crown Theatre, Peckham.

It is quite a Sabbath day's journey from Fleet Street to the Crown Theatre, Peckham. The train that takes you from St. Paul's is one of those thoughtful, meditative, dilettante monsters that love to do nothing with a great air of business. But if you are nice to the brute, and do not speak harshly to it, it may land you at Peckham somewhere about twenty minutes after the curtain has risen on Dick Whittington. You must not mind being late: twenty minutes matter nothing to a philosophising locomotive, and, really, they should matter little to you. For why: you can cram enough laughter into the fifst ten minutes you are in your seat to recompense you for all the journey through the desert.

Firstly, Miss Marie Lloyd is the Dick, and a better Dick, a more kindhearted, jolly young blade you will not find in London Town this season. Apart from her natural gift of jollity, which no one can deny, Miss Lloyd has serious claims to be considered an artist. I fancy some of my superior readers lifting their eyebrows and exclaiming: "What! Marie Lloyd an artist!" Yes, indeed! If you have one scrap of appreciation for art in your soul you cannot sit at the feet of Miss Lloyd for a whole evening without acknowledging that she is, in her own sphere, as great an artist as the late Jenny Hill. Generally we roar when she sings and winks that roguish eye of hers: we roar so heartily that we forget to ask why we roar and how she makes us roar. Her songs are often, alas! mere badly rhymed strings of inanities, her speeches silly punning "lengths," but it is not exactly what she says, it's the clever way she says it, that brings an audience to her feet. She knows when to be restrained, when to be ebullient; she may be vulgar at times, but she is always humorous and very often witty; and she has the faculty of captivating her audience by talking and singing to them - taking them into her confidence - rather than at them. Then she can make her brilliant white teeth flash on you so suddenly that you are dazzled; her wink tickle you; her smile warm you; her chuckle rouse you to responsive merriment. But it is useless trying to set down in the space of a half-column the multifarious delights of Miss Lloyd's art. She is great, and she must be seen to be appreciated. You go doubting, perhaps; you come away her slave.

imagine. He is never still; he is the incarnation of perpetual motion; boisterous humour bubbles from him and swamps every moment with a full flood of fun. Mr. Arthur Nelstone, too, and his charming wife sing and dance themselves into your good graces with rare swiftness; you look at them when they are doing "My Girl" and you are captive.

The dresses are more gorgeous than those at many older theatres, but Mr. Cohen has an eye for colour and staging, and he has not stinted his "crowd" in the matter of costumes. There is a troupe of dancers from the well-known school of Mr. Paul Valentine, who has given his pupils some delightful little bits of dancing to do, and they do them with all the grace and charm that must ever be the attributes of youth and beauty. Altogether, a remarkably lively and merry pantomime. One improvement only can I suggest: that is, the cutting out of a song about a certain garden and the loveliness of everything there. I do not give the name of the lady who sang it, because I hope she was as sorry to sing it as I was to hear it.

M.

Published in Black and White - Jan 21, 1899.