THE LADIES’ WORLD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2763, 18 March 1910, Page 3

THE LADIES’ WORLD.

MADAME BERNHARDT

Madame Sarah Bernhardt evidently cogitated very sonouslv before accepting the offer to appear on a music-hall stage Writing before its acceptance a Paris correspondent wrote thus:— Madame Sarah Bernhardt has not yet made up her mind whether she will appear at the London Colisseum or not. She had a tempting offer, but did not realise that the house in which she was to appear was a music-hall. There lies tile whole question. It is, of course, superfluous to say that Madame Bernhardt -has never been scon in a musiclm'd except as a spectator. To appear there as an actress would be a new, perhaps a dangerously new departure. 31a. dame Bernhardt is still considering whether she will make the innovation. She is naturally well acquainted with the theatres of London, in so many of which she has so often acted. But she may be pardoned for not remembering exaetl- what the Colisseum is, though she has played in London since it was opened. She may have imagined from Die Greek termination of the name that it was -something like what the old Lyceum was in Sir Henry Irving’s day. At all events, when the offer was made to her she agreed to- consider it. The- to i ms ■ wore tempting, even for Madame Bernhardt: £4060 for twentyfour performances in a month, each performance in a sketch to last ten minutes. This works out at a good deal over a guinea and a half a minute. The actress agreed to consider the pro_ posal and the terms, and is still considering them. She would accept them, but the truth of the matter is that the term “music-hall” rather frightens her. She did not at first, when negotiations began, understand that the Colisseum was not a theatre or the “legitimate drama,” and she was told that, besides herself, such actresses as Miss Ellen Terry and Miss Marie Tempest would appear. Madame Bernhardt is, of course, entirely ignorant of the curious rules by which dramatic sketches may bo enacted in London music-halls, and with which she is not personally in any way concerned. Hoi- standpoint is this: She will appear in legitimate drama at the Colisseum or elsewhere in London. Sh© will not “do a turn” in a music-hall “after or before acrobats, fancy dances, or learned animals,” as she put it herself. She added, though unnecessarily, that her career as an artiste is a sufficient guarantee that she would never consent to any exhibition of that kind. In short, I gathered from wliat Madame Sarah Bernhardt said herself, that tlic whole thing is a question of tact. Once before she refused to appear in a theatre because the curtain, when it came down after each act, was plastered with advertisements for cocoa, champagne, and motor-cars. Having such scruples it is not likely that she will, for example, act the death scene of Phedre between two turns of the limit in eccentricity and Herr So-and-So with liis performing dogs. It is not only unlikely, but unthinkable.