Marcli 28, 1918 
Land & Water 
15 
The Balkan Stage : By H. Collinson Owen 
ONCE upon a time, for my sins or otherwise, I was 
dramatic critic on a London morning paper. It 
is accepted, and even desired, by most journalists 
that their. work may take them into all sorts of 
odd corners of the world ; but I never dreamed 
that one day I should become a dramatic critic in the Balkans. 
The other day I received a letter from a former colleague 
which contained a sentence that was peculiarly apt to the 
moment. He touched in his letter on the London theatres 
as they were at the moment of his writing, and said, with 
what was intended to be an insistence on the obvious : " But, 
of course, you have no pantomimes in Macedonia." It was 
curious that only the day before I had returned from a tour 
of a large portion of our front line here, where I had been 
solely in order to visit three divisional pantomimes. And 
they were certainly among the best pantomimes I have 
ever seen. 
Our soldiers in all the zones of war are unexcelled in making 
the best of things and in creating good entertainment out of 
very little, but I doubt if in any army such good results have 
been obtained as in the army of the Balkans. In France the 
problem is much easier. The two great centres of civilisa- 
tion, Paris and London, are each only a day away, with 
their wonderful shops and limitless resources. As far as 
civilisation goes our front-line men hei 2 are based on Salonica, 
which is still no more than a burnt-out shell. But, all the 
same, in spite of Fritz and his U-boats, both Paris and London 
have been drawn on to contribute to the startling success of 
these and other theatrical ventures. With the parcel post 
as we know it, it is well to cultivate the long view in 
Macedonia. Wise people order their winter things in summer, 
and vice versa. Similarly, the devoted and hard-working 
people responsible for these entertainments thought out their 
problems aliead many months ago, and pressed into service 
such lucky people as were then going on leave. Thus, on 
programmes, all of which were distributed well within 
artillery range (the Macedonian theatres have the honour of 
being the furthest advanced theatres of any in the war) one 
could read : " The principals' dresses from Paris and Athens " ; 
"Costumes and wigs specially executed for this production 
by Blank & Co., Brighton" ; and "Wigs and costumes by 
So-and-so, Ltd., London." And thus it is that in a large 
barn on the fringes of a miserable little wrecked Macedonian 
village, Bluebeard comes on to the stage clad in gorgeous 
garments that are a delight to the eye and the senses. 
The three pantomimes were "Robinson Crusoe," "Blue- 
beard," and "Dick Whittington" : homely old stories planted 
down, with their comic ladies, principal boys, beauty choruses, 
etc., all complete in darkest Macedonia. But each story was 
adapted to the special circumstances. Robinson Crusoe was 
wrecked not in the western seas, but somewhere on the 
coasts of Macedon, and found his Man Friday in a faithful 
vendor of the Balkan News. Bluebeard had his lair not in 
Norway, but in Salonica, and was discomfited by the ever- 
resourceful British Navy. And Dick Whittington took his 
cat not to Morocco, but to somewhere in the Struma Valley, 
where the faithful animal (wickedly dubbed Winston) .cleared 
the rats out of the Pasha's Headquarters, obtaining before- 
hand unconditional terms of surrender from the Turks. 
The large majority of the British troops for whom 
these entertainments were prepared were the fighting men of 
the service. Many of them have been through big battles 
in France, and others as big in Macedonia. They have 
campaigned for what seems an age in a country which has 
many discomforts and no distractions. They know some- 
thing about malaria and dysentery. Lots of them have 
never seen even a decent village since they left England or 
France. The average Macedonian village is a poor affair, 
and those that are not wrecked are generally out of bounds. 
And here in the Macedonian wilderness, where the kites and 
vultures wheel endlessly by day, and the jackal howls and 
whimpers by night ; with Salonica (such as it is) fifty miles 
away, and beer a rarity in the canteen, the men were able to 
look across a real orchestra and real footlights, and see a 
show which in its essentials was as good as anything which 
could be found in that dear old Blighty which now seems 
but the faint echo of a dream. 
At each show the men are enraptured. It is impossible to 
imagine audiences more delighted and keen. The vigour of 
their approval radiated from them like electricity. They 
pay 2d. admission, and. having seen the show once, any man 
is willing to offer 5 drachmas for the ticket of a comrade 
who is next on the list. It must be recorded, even, that 
some "faking" has occurred with the tickets, and the box- 
office clerks at the various theatres have had to keep open 
very sharp eyes. I think I sympathise with the fakers. If 
I had lived for two whole years in the Balkan front line, and 
only a little scrap of paper of this kind stood between another 
visit to the Divisional Theatre, I should be very muclj 
tempted to try to bluff the guardians at the portals of so 
much delight and happiness. 
Eight Shows a Week, 
The pantomimes have meant extremely hard work for 
all concerned. Eight shows a week, including two matinees 
(no Sunday performances) has been the rule, and the men so 
engaged, largely infantrymen, have earned their pay ten 
times over. Pantomimes comprise leading ladies and ladies 
of the chorus. This is a difficulty which has long since largely! 
disappeared from our Macedonian shows, and in these later 
ones it has been triumphantly overcome. Each production 
has its leaven of mediocre female impersonators, who are not 
expected to do much more than look pleasant (as they -do) 
in the costumes provided for them. But each production 
also has something startlingly good to show in this respect. 
The qualities include striking beauty, good dancing, good 
singing, and — in one case particularly — amazing joie de vivre 
and sprightliness of the soubrette type. There are several 
cases where it is frankly next to impossible to believe that 
the radiant creature on the stage is a soldier-man. At each 
of the three pantomimes I have been "behind" after the 
show, and though, of course, one had no real illusions as to 
the sex of the players, yet, all the same, it came as a shock 
to see these dainty creatures peeling off their feminine finery 
and putting on again the rough khaki of active service. 
Shakespeare was not confronted with the supreme difficulty 
one has always imagined ini having to use men for his female 
parts. The Balkan Army has shown that it can be done 
with an extraordinary amount of success. 
We have a principal boy (not unknown to the Londoa 
stage) who is a positive marvel of willowy grace, and it is a 
curious thing that this part, as played by a man, is the only 
one difficult to accept, so accustomed are we to thinking of 
the principal boy as a particularly buxom female. Two 
French hospital nurses who saw him opened their eyes with 
amaze. " Mon Dieu, qu'il est bien ! " exclaimed one. A 
distinguished British officer, sitting with the fair visitors, 
launched into an explanation in British-French of what the 
principal boy stood for in pantomime ; but it is to be feared 
that they understood him but vaguely, as not only had they 
never seen a principal boy before, but they had never even 
heard of a pantomime. 
From all possible points of view, these pantomimes have 
been complete successes. They have stimulated a good 
deal of inter-Divisional rivalry and given innumerable sub- 
jects for conversation, which are good things. They are, 
without exception, clean, with not a questionable joke. 
Talent has been poured into them. The "books" are witty, 
the dancing good, the part-songs (in several instances) super- 
latively good, the acting thoroughly competent, and the 
comic men (and ladies) really comic. Lighting, costumes, 
and scenery have all been treated with a professional hand, 
limited only here and there by lack of space. And a very 
special word must be said of the orchestras. Here the 
various regimental bands have been drawn upon. All three 
orchestras were excellent ; but one pantomime was easily 
the leader in this respect. To listen to its orchestra playing 
some of our best light music (cosily sunk in a trench, and 
with a gold-painted iron rail hung with green curtains 
separating it from the "stalls") was a delight such as only 
those long separated from the pleasures of home can appre- 
ciate. And a final word must be said for the daintily 
appointed theatre bars, where coffee, cakes (and even other 
things) could be obtained in much comfort. At one of them, 
during an entr'acle, I bought a massive cigar de luxe at a 
spot not far removed from a noted Bulgarian village 
massacre during the wars of 1912. 
Leaving this place the niorning after, I overtook a Scots 
battalion, marching over the plain to take up its watch on 
the Struma. The pipers were skirling aliead, and the sight 
of those swinging kilties was one to stir the blood. And 
I prefer to think that their jaunty step and happy air were 
partly accounted for by the fact that on the previous evening 
many of them had shared in the fun and hilarity and rousing 
choruses of "Dick Whittington." 
