Trickwork

Trickwork, outstanding feature of 19th-century British theatre, particularly in pantomime, which was much admired abroad. Stage tricks depending mainly upon the working of ingenious mechanisms are dealt with under transformation scene and traps; but the apotheosis of the trick came when the brilliant timing and acrobatic skill of the actor were combined with the expertise of the experienced stage-carpenter. The humblest example was the roll-out, in which a flap of loose canvas was left at the bottom of a piece of scenery, through which a player could suddenly roll from behind and leap to his feet on stage. The leap, in fact, was the supreme test of the trick player. In essence no more than an acrobat's jumping through a trap in the scenery, as in the vamp trap, it could, by the skilful interplay of a group of highly trained actors and the clever multiplication and placing of different types of trap, become an entertainment fit to stand on its own. Such an entertainment was the dumb ballet, of which the best-known exponents were the Hanlon-Lees. London audiences had a chance to see something resembling the old trickwork (which is still employed in the commedia dell'arte theatre in the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen) when Peppino De Filippo brought his company to the World Theatre Season of 1964 in Metamorphoses of a Wandering Minstrel. (See also FALLING FLAPS.)