Explore "In Search of a Show" by Thomas Burke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I have been looking for a needle in a haystack, and I have not found it. I have been looking for an hour's true entertainment in London's theatres and music-halls during this spring season of 1918.
The tag of Mr. Gus Elen's old song, "E dunno where 'e are," very aptly describes the condition of the regular theatre-goer to-day. What would the old laddies of the Bodega-cheese days have thought, had any prophesied that at one swift step the Oxford and the Pavilion would simultaneously move into the ranks of the "legitimate; " that His Majesty's Theatre would be running a pantomime; that smoking would be allowed in the Lyceum, the Comedy, the Vaudeville, and the Garrick? Many people have lost their individuality by being merged into one or other war-movement since 1914; many streets have entirely lost those distinctive features which enable us to recognize them at one glance or by sound or smell; but nowhere has the war more completely smashed personality than in theatre-land.