MISS CORNELL NOT COMING.

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1938, Page 21

MISS CORNELL NOT COMING.

Miss Katharine Cornell has returned to New York from a survey trip. to London and the Continent, and has announced that she will.not attempt to carry out .her plans for a world tour ! this season. The tour. was scheduled ''• to begin in March of this year; Miss i Cornell, who is a noted American act- ■.. ressand married to Guthrie McClintic, the famous 'producsr-playwright, would; '• have presented a repertoire of plays 1 including "Romeo and Juliet," Shaw's i "Saint Joan" and "Candida," and Rudolf . Besier"s "The. Barretts of Wimpole Street."' The troubled conditions in ] the East have prevented Miss Cornell i from acting in the Orient, and also dis- < rupted lines of travel to Australia and « New Zealand. In Europe political 1 and economic conditions militate against a season there. The tour was * planned to last two years; and Miss , Cornell has reluctantly decided to post- j •pone her visit rather than abbreviate - her original plan. Meanwhile the t gathering of facts and information for i the world tour continues, and when i conditions become more stabilised, fshe i will look forward to the first "stand" \ on her long tour round the world. (

There is .every possibility that Miss Ruth Draper, the noted English actress, will visit New Zealand in the course of a world tour which she will begin shortly. Her itinerary has not yet been finally arranged (writes the London correspondent of "The Post" on December 15). Miss Draper occupies a unique position on the English stage She appears alone, and by sheer mastery of the art of monologue holds her audiences spellbound for two hours. In its less perfect form the monologue can be merely an affliction, but it is, impossible not to be captivated by Miss Draper's version of it After a lengthy absence .from the London stage she has . recently begun a new season as a prelude to her world tour, and has, once again won the enthusiastic acclaim of all critics. "Miss .any other;play or picturel in London, but see Ruth Draper at all costs,'' one wrote. Her impressions, far from losing their earlier appeal and freshness, seem to improve with each new presentation," said another leading reviewer. ."Probably nobody will .ever learn the secret vvhich enables her so to stimulate our imaginations that at one moment we are surrounded by the shrill hurly-burly of a children's party in Philadelphia, and at the next we are walking through an English garden in= the company of its arrogant and talkative owner. Mjss Draper's projections of personality are something to marvel at, and her obis sure and persuasive.