Strange Stories
Page 26
The programme for that evening is before me now. I kept it with my notes of the old man’s tale, and I have just found the packet, one of hundreds like it.
“Order Tea from the Attendants, who will bring it to you in the Interval. A Cup of Tea and A Plate of Bread and Butter, Price 3d. Also French Pastries, 3d. each.”
Wilfrid Lawson, later eminent, played the clean-limbed, overinvolved young hero, Mark Ingestre, in the production we had seen.
There had been a live orchestra, whose opening number had been “Blaze Away.”
There were jokes, there were adverts (“Best English Meat Only”), there were even Answers for Correspondents. The price of the programme is printed on the cover: Twopence.
On the other hand, there was a Do You Know? section. “Do You Know,” ran the first interrogation, “that Sweeney Todd has broken all records for this theatre since it was built?”
***
Making him wear a three-cornered hat!” the old man had exclaimed with derision. “And Mrs. Lovat with her hair powdered!”
“David Garrick used to play Macbeth in knee breeches,” I replied. Dramatic critics may often, as in my case, know little, but they all know that.