64 



The Review of Reviews. 



AN EARTHQUAKE ON THE STAGE. 



How IT IS Made. 



In CassflVs for January Mr. Pearkes Withers gives 

 a most interesting account of tlie musical comedy 

 " Mousme " m the malting. The making began two 

 years ago, and was a matter of the most painstaking 

 and exact preparation. The plot turned on -an earth- 

 quake in the second act. It was "a marvellously 

 proper earthquake, which Nature copied so faithfully 

 in Pennsylvania a few months later that a photograph 

 of the real disaster looked at first sight like a photo- 

 graph of the earthquake in the ' Mousm^.' " Th€ 

 buildings that apparently are destroyed on the stag6 

 are really not a whit the worse : — ■ 



Roofs and walls were specially constructed to topple and fall 

 into an apparently hopeless mass of wreckage ; tiles and trees, 

 branches and blossoms, are nightly showered upon the stage, 

 both from the actual scenery and from the flies. After the fall 

 of the curtain the greater part of ihe realistic litter is swept 

 through a long trap into a sheet of sacking under the stage, and 

 so carried bodily up into the fliea in readiness for the next 

 performance. 



AN EARTHQUAKE ORGAN. 



The subterranean rumble which precedes and 

 accompanies an earthquake was a matter of some 

 difficulty : — 



Then Mr. Tritschler, recalling a juvenile visit to Durham 

 Cathedral, suggested the use of an organ 1 Most people who 

 have been to church must have noticed how the lowest notes on 

 a great organ seem to make the very aisles and pews vibrate. 

 Mr. Tritschler, as a boy of ten, had attempted to rush from 

 Durham Cathedral because the organist had played the bottom 

 " C "and " D flat" simultaneously, and the whole of the m.ajestic 

 edifice had seemed to be about to fall. So he .suggested that 

 an organ should be specially built for the theatre containing 

 only those two pipes. So an organ-builder was consulted, and 

 one morning producer and scenic artist sat in a deserted City 

 church while the organ-builder played vigorously on the two 

 all-important notes. The church was shaken to its very founda- 

 tions by the rumble that resulted, and the organ-builder departed 

 with a commission to make an earthquake orean for the Shaftes- 

 bury Theatre ! 



DRAMATIC TEACHING OF MANNERS. 

 In the December Century President (J. \V. Eliot 

 writes on democracy and manners, apropos of an 

 Inquiry into the teaching of manners in the public 

 schools. Out of seven hundred and forty schools 

 an.swering to a circular of inquiry, there ^vere only one 

 hundred and tifty-five where there wa^ regular, 

 systematic and somewhat e.xtensive instruction in 

 manners. One way of teaching manners is mentioned 

 which may he commended to English schools : — 



One superintendent reported through the principal of a large 

 school in which more than half of the children came from bare 

 homes, with only elementary notions of manners, and were 

 destined to leave school by fourteen ye.irs of age or even earlier, 

 a dramatic or representative method of teaching good manners 

 which was used in addition (o ten-minute daily discussion in 

 each room of the rules of politeness toward ciders, teachers, 

 visitors, and strangers, and of behaviour at table and in the 

 street, streetcar, shop, and school. 



Periodically all the children from the different rooms were 

 called together in the assembly hall, on the stage of which repre- 

 sentations of correct behaviour were given. This method lakes 

 advantage of most children's pleasure in "making believe " and 



acting. Selected children illustrate on the stage the proper way 

 to speak to a lady or an old gentleman, and how to perform and 

 acknowledge an introduction. I.iitle tau.fe scenes are enacted, 

 and a boy helps a lady from a carri.ige or a car. This is all 

 done in an earnest, serious way ; but the children are interested 

 in the performance, and both actors and spectators enjoy it. 

 Much instruction in manners can be given in schools by 

 acting plays and charades which illustrate both good manners 

 and bad. Although children often fail to discern or be 

 interested in the real plot or subtle motives in dramas, they 

 usually apprehend perfectly the manners depicted on the stage 

 The members of the school and their parents will always 

 provide an interested audience for such plays, and by having 

 several different casts for each play, the number of children 

 who get the benefit of acting may be made considerable, and 

 the number of interested relatives will be so great as to require 

 several representations of eachfilay. 



THE COST OF "THE MIRACLE." 

 In the /'rt/Zil/,?// yl/(?i^(72/w for January Mr. F A. 

 H Eyles gives an illustrated account of " The 

 Miracle," Professor Max Reinhardt's spectacular play 

 at Olympia. He gives the following particulars of 

 the cost • — 



The cost of the production and of the eight weeks' run that is 

 contemplated will amount to seventy thousand pounds. Some 

 of the principal sums of expenditure may be enumerated :— 



Costumes 



Scenery and properties 

 Movable mountain ... 

 Excavation for the trap 

 Iron framework for cathedral doors 

 Electric installation apparatus 

 Electric wiring and fixing .. 

 Use of the organ 



Artists' salaries per week, including 

 Principals ... 

 Chorus of 500 

 1,000 minor players 

 Orchestra of 200 ... 

 Boys and girls 

 Girl dancers 



Approximately (for 8 weeks' run), ^'40,000. 

 To make, so great a production profitable the takings must 

 amount to at least a thousand pounds a performance, assuming 

 that seventy-two performances are given during the run, twelve 

 a week for the first fortnight, and eight for six weeks afterwards, 

 as originally contemplated. 



;^'2,5oo 

 8,000 

 800 

 1,690 

 1,250 

 3,000 

 1,500 

 1,000 



800 

 I,2C0 



1.725 

 950 



US 

 "75 



Father Coleridg-e as a Poet. 

 The Rev. Matthew Russell has contributed an 

 interesting article to the Irish Mcnthly for December 

 on Father Henry James Coleridge as a poet. Father 

 Coleridge was an indefatigable author of prose, for 

 he wrote some thirty volumes with his own hand, 

 besides innumeiable articles. He was brother of 

 Lord Coleridge, a grand-nephew of Snmuel 'Jaylor 

 Coleridge, and, says .Mr. Russell, he could, like many 

 others who die with all their music in them, have 

 been a poet if he had given his mind to it. Never- 

 theless, while editor of the Month, he published 

 several beautiful poems and hymns in that periodical 

 without any signature. These included his transla- 

 tion of the "Adoro Te Devote" of St. Thomas 

 .Aquinas, which holds a high place among the 

 numerous versions of the hymn He was also editor 

 of the Messcn^i-r of thi- Saacd Heart and contributed 

 Latin and English verses to it. 



