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Shankar, a perfectly proportioned male with a sensitive, feminine face, arranges his dances with a canny understanding of the theatre, dances them with every one of his slippery muscles. He is a flirtatious lover, coquettishly throwing his neck out of joint to impress his Partner Simkie. an almost equally sinuous Frenchwoman (the only Occidental in the troupe) who can throw her neck out of joint too, now that she has lived and danced with Orientals. Shankar is an exciting, malevolent snake-charmer, crouching in one spot, wriggling his wrists, his thumbs, his little fingers. He is a strange, aloof god, teaching the lesser gods how to dance; a grotesquely masked chief of the demons strutting a ludicrous battle against his twelve-year-old Brother Robindra masked as a foolish little king of the monkeys.
Shankar and his troupe were slated for a tour through the West and South but their Manhattan success last week made them consider a run at a Broadway theatre instead, with side trips to Boston and Philadelphia.
Trouble at the Met
During the sad second act of Madame Butterfly last week, irrepressible titters rippled through the audience at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House. Buddy Rhode, a yellow-haired child of 4. was playing the part of Trouble, the baby born to Cio-Cio-San after Pinkerton, the U. S. naval lieutenant, deserts her. The audience tittered because Buddy Rhode was obviously so excited by his surroundings that any moment he might become too much for Cio-Cio-San (Soprano Elizabeth Rethberg) and Suzuki, the nurse (Contralto Ina Bourskaya) to manage.*
In the last act Buddy Rhode had become far too excited to feign sleep as he had been ordered to do after watching supposedly all night for Pinkerton's return. When Cio-Cio-San heard of Pinkerton's marriage to a white woman, became wildly excited and flourished a dagger at scarey-looking old Goro, the marriage broker, frightened Buddy Rhode fled the stage. Suzuki brought him back for Cio-Cio-San's farewell but by that time Buddy Rhode was sobbing so realistically that he had to be carried off stage for good. As soon as Cio-Cio-San stabbed herself the curtain was dropped. Pinkerton and his U. S. wife never came on for the opera's last scene because Buddy Rhode was in no condition to sit crooning amiably'with a U. S. flag in his hand, waiting to be adopted. He explained afterwards that he was afraid some one was going to "hurt the pretty lady."
*For a stage child, the Metropolitan, like most opera companies, prefers to use a doll or a midget when one is available. Midgets sometimes act too well. Rehearsing for her London debut as Norma four summers ago, Soprano Rosa Ponselle found her small stage-son embarrassingly responsive to her caresses, inquired his age, learned he was 19.