San Francisco Minstrels

“The best time to live in is the present. Speaking portraits are taken from life. If we do not keep up with the age, we lose the sparkle, freshness, and fun. The San Francisco Minstrels see this important point, and are consequently the first in the field. Novelty is their motto, and their practice is to shoot the flying follies on the wing just as they rise from cover. Their latest sensation is the ‘Female Brokers of Wall Street,’ introducing the strong-minded Mrs. Good-Hand (Billy Birch) and Mrs. C. Laugh-lin (Charley Backus), and those giants in the realm of Mammon, Jim Fish (W. Bernard) and C. Wanderbilt (John Mulligan). The mere suggestion of this association of names is a tempting basis for the erection of any night of comical absurdity and extravagance. The broad burlesquers here have availed themselves freely of the opportunity; and the financial beauties, bulls, and bears fire off their jokes like a rattling fusillade of infantry. The female brokers become a power in the street. The hero of black Friday and the original of the ‘bronze’ join in the fray, and the golden bubble is sent up as high as Trinity steeple. The beauties and the beasts mount skyward, enlarging to sight as they rise, till the bubble bursts, and all come, one upon the other, with a crash to the ground. The gold room is no more, and specie payment is resumed.”

“The San Francisco Minstrels have been doing fairly this past week with their new local sketch of ‘The Female Brokers.’ We dropped in to hear the new tenor of the troupe, Harry Norman, on Saturday night. He possesses a rather sweet voice, but judging from a single hearing it is neither a great compass nor very powerful. His style, too, is not of the best. The fact is that Wambold is missed by the frequenters of the hall, as he is at the head of Minstrel ballad singers, and Norman cannot take his place. Newcomb’s singing and dancing is still one of the attractive features of the performances, and the peculiar dances of the trio, Queen, West and Sturgis, is a taking card. The new sketch of the ‘Female Brokers’ is not calculated to create a furore. The wit and humor of the piece is limited. A sketch of the kind affords many opportunities for telling hits, but these are not taken advantage of to any extent in this little piece. Instead of having the business marked by witty references to the peculiar characteristics of the leading operators of the street, Birch and Backus have little else to do than to pound away at their customers with stuffed clubs and bladders. We expected something better than this country minstrel style of thing. Mulligan does Vanderbilt well, but Fisk is not as well burlesqued as he might have been. To ‘hit folly as it flies’ requires skillful handling of a strong bow supplied with a quiver of arrows pointed with sharp wit and keen sarcasm. This we have a right to expect from a troupe like the San Francisco Minstrels.”