The first seven minutes of this short, featuring Buster Keaton playing 26 unique characters, are absolutely delightful. Buster is the guy who buys a ticket to see "the world's greatest minstrel stars," all seven members of an orchestra, one stagehand, nine minstrels in blackface, six audience members (three of whom are women), and a two man tap dance act. I'll say up front that, mercifully, the blackface characters get the least air time, simply telling a couple jokes, so don't let it stop you from seeing this gem.
Meanwhile, even in the long shots of the orchestra, Buster tried to do something with each character. The trombone player motions to the drummer about something in the score, and the drummer responds. The violinist wipes his nose with the back of his hand on one of his bow strokes, and at one point the drummer fires a gun into the air. We get solo shots of the conductor scratching his back with his baton, and the bass player chalking his bow as it were a pool cue. The bassoon player struggles to get his instrument into his mouth before beginning to teethe on it like a baby, and then it's back to the bass player bowing as if her were trying to saw a tree down. The trombonist has to oil his slide, causing it to then slip off the instrument when he tries again. The whole thing ends with the conductor's score scattering, and the chaos is exactly what you'd expect from an all-Buster orchestra.
Buster also played three pairs of audience members. He's an affluent man with his wife who's fanning herself; he reads from the program and quips "This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show." He's a boy licking a lollipop and his grandmother who tells him to keep his feet off the railing. He's also an older woman in a low-cut dress, who tells her dozing husband to wake up, whereupon he startles and begins clapping. The boy above drops his lollipop into her lap, which she promptly mistakes for her opera glasses and sticks to her eye socket; meanwhile, the grandmother in response to the shouting below accidentally pours her bottle of coke onto the husband, who then opens an umbrella. It's simply brilliant.
Buster awakens from a dream to seemingly find that he's being evicted, but then in a clever bit, we see he's assembled his room at a studio. As the workers fold up the walls of his "apartment," we see "Act 3 Scene 4" written on the back of one of them. He then begins his workday as a stagehand by punching the clock - literally. Two actresses then show up, twins, naturally, which Buster doesn't realize at first, making him think he's seeing one woman appear and disappear and then double, which in turn causes him to (briefly) swear off alcohol. When he re-emerges, they're both standing in front of mirrors, and later he stands in front of three face mirrors himself, the fun continuing. Later he'll fall in love with one of them, and mistakenly make his overtures to the wrong one (his ultimate solution being to paint a large X on the back of his love's neck).
After losing an orangutan used in the show, Buster dresses up as a chimp himself, walking around, galloping up into a chair, and smoking a cigar to play the part as one comically. Later, he employs construction workers to play Zouave guards under his command which was a little less successful, but the motion effects during their assembly was clever, as was the crowd revealed standing behind a large man. The film may have faded a teeny bit during its second half, but by that point, I didn't care. You get little moments like Buster whacking a man whose beard is on fire in the face with a fire axe, then hacking off both his beard and mustache with said axe, as well as him coming to the rescue of one of the women in her underwater act at first by using a small cup to ladle water out of the tank. Naturally, he then goes for an enormous sledgehammer, finding comedy in both extremes, and causing a literal deluge in the theater. He even rows off in a drum, using a violin for an oar.
This short is just jam packed with gags and with Buster in all of those roles early on, it's truly special. Just to achieve appearing on the screen in 2, 3, and even 9 times with little to no distortion or edge effects was dazzling. This is definitely one to check out.
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