Venue(s):
Kelly and Leon's Minstrels Hall (720 Broadway)
Event Type:
Minstrel
Status:
Published
Last Updated:
5 December 2015
“Their [Kelly and Leon’s] performances are such as baffle both sobriety and description.”
“Music, Dance, Mirth, Jokes, Operas, Puns, Screaming Burlesques, Oddities, Novelties.”
“A capital bill was offered at this favorite minstrel hall last evening. The house was crowded, and from the screaming introduction to the terminating agony each face distended in a broad grin to an alarming extent. Leon, prima donna danseuse, vendor of city items, author of excruciating burlesque, and to quote the language of the bills, representative of others too numerous to mention, was of course the particular star. His warblings in the Doctor of All Can’t Hear Her of Arditi’s brilliant waltzing nonsense, was deserving of bouquets and bravos. His voice is marvelously like a soprano, and is said to range to the ledger line D, not to be continued any further, we hope. His pas in the original and torrid spectacle of Cinder Leon are Tagilonian in effect. The interminable legs of Nelse Seymour and his quiet humor in the Dangerous Game, and the staid serio comic Kelly, with Allen and Sam Price always bring forth the inevitable guffaw from the more demonstrative portion of the audience, and applause from the others. No one will ever be afflicted with melancholy insanity, who hears an editor’s troubles, from the lips of Leon or witnesses Slimkin Jasons Dodging for a Wife at this handsome little hall.”