This Variety programme features a typical selection of individual performers in a range of acts including comedy and dance from Arthur Stacey, singing from Lena Liscard, and speciality acrobatics in the form of jumping over barrels from Loupe and Ladies. The main attraction of the evening would have been the gloriously chaotic sketch Hustle the 'newest super production' of the fifty-eight year old impresario Fred Karno (1866-1941). The youngest performers in Hustle may well have been dancers Esme & Dolores, the twenty-two year old identical twins who kept this poster as a souvenir.

Karno, born in Exeter as Frederick John Westcott, was a natural athlete who began his stage career as an assistant to the wire-walker and juggler Alvene. He became a circus clown and spent his early years touring with various circuses including Lord George Sanger's and Fred Ginetti's. He worked in Variety and pantomime, and after 1895 developed the type of acrobatic slapstick sketch that became his hallmark. Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel were both members of Karno's troupe, Chaplin becoming its star by 1911. As Stan Laurel once said: 'Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie and me all we know about comedy, he just taught us most of it. Above all, he taught us to be supple and precise. Out of all that endless rehearsal and performance came Charlie, the most supple and precise comedian of our time.'