‘La Milo, whose marvellously clever representations of classical statuary provoked such a storm of criticism a year or two ago is the great attraction this week,’ said The Northern Echo of the star turn at the New Hippodrome and Palace Theatre of Varieties (now the Civic Theatre).
La Milo was a voluptuous Australian actress called Pansy Montague. She was ‘the female form displayed in all its essential detail’, whose living statuary act caused outrage when she arrived in Britain in 1906. She would pour her curves into a tight pink leotard or, if she was feeling brave, strip naked and cover them with white enamel paint. Then she would go on stage and impersonate ‘with marvellous fidelity and skill … some of the best known works of sculptural art’.
Using ‘imperceptible breathing’ so that no part of her moved, the ‘pose plastique performer’ stood stock still impersonating famous statues, including the Venus de Milo. ‘The Modern Milo’, though, clearly had two arms, unlike the statue in the Louvre – but the men in the audience were looking at her other charms …
‘The storm which burst over her head when first she entered upon her task of presenting to the public her studies in breathing marble of the statues of antiquity has largely died away, and now her performance is acclaimed as beautifully artistic,’ concluded the Echo.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2009)