AMUSEMENTS.
"The Hustler" played to a fair house at the Lansing last night. As specialty companies go the present "Hustler" company is unusually good. The people are mostly new and the whole production has been greatly improved since last season. From a specialty production the public does not expect plots or climaxes or even funny situations, but it does expect good specialties, handsome costumes, jokes even that were made at some time since the creation, and women at whom one can look without a sensation of pain. "The Hustler" did all this and even more. The costumes were all in excellent taste and perfect harmony of color. The women were not only richly but becomingly dressed. As to the women themselves, there were five and they were all pretty. Pretty women may not be necessary to a good performance, but there is no gainsaying that they are a very enjoyable luxury. Some of the jokes had been said before, but, by the way, most things have. The specialties were all good, and the male quartet was very fair, though one of the tenors had a fatal tendency to get away from the rest. The hat kicking act was done particularly well. In short the whole performance fulfilled the great dictum de omni et nullo of all farce comedy: "The girls were pretty The boys were witty."
John Tierney as McFadden and Harry Watson as Busch seem well adapted to comedy of that nature, and it is doubtful if they could easily be improved upon. Mamie Mayo in her song, the "Bowery Girl," was altogether refreshing. She had little or no voice, but after she once smote you with her smile and "told you her eyes" you didn't mind that. Miss Mayo has one of those aggressive personalities that walk right over the footlights. She sings—and smiles—in dead earnest and "wades right in." as the gallery boys would say. She has a robust physique and plenty of warmth and is very much alive, and nobody minds at all that it is a little shady, enough to make it "refreshing." Mr. Harry Watson in his song and dance in effeminate trousers was many times encored, and like the cat that is not unknown to fame, he came back, "For he couldn't stay away."
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