THE ALLAH WILKIE SEASON

Evening Star, Issue 20135, 27 March 1929, Page 7

THE ALLAH WILKIE SEASON

A letter written by a student of the ■Workers’ Educational Association and embodied in a report ol its activities contains a quotation Irom Bel mud Shaw that is extraordinarily apposite with reference to the Shakespearean season which Air Allan Wilkie will open at His Alajesty’s Theatre on Saturday next. “If you want anyone to go either to lectures or to see a film not el speak of these as or it will scare tho people away,” _ The dictum applies even more emphatically to the drama and the reiteration of the educational ” merits of Urn world’s greatest dramatist, who wrote essentially lor the stage, and with a very shrewd conception of the necessity lor ‘‘Defiling the cars of the groundlings, has done much to deprive the public ul a very retd source of entertainment. Shakespeare suffers enormously as a box office attraction from that fact that be has so long figured in the school t.iin’ii-'iilum that it is lor,gotten that ho survives to-day on bis intrinsic merits as poet and dramatist rather than on the dubious advantages lie enjoys as _a test of fitness in a school leaving certificate. It is perhaps with sonic such idea in mind that Air Wilkie has selected ‘The Merry Wives of. Windsor ’ as his opening production, lor had this play depended for immortality on its inclusion in examination syllabuses it bad long since died. Jt is most excellent entertainment, but let no one drag himself away Irom the fierce counter-attractions of the latest underwork! melodrama or the newest million dollar film to sit through it with the determined air of those who imbibe unpleasant medicine because they have the idea that they will be better for it. ‘The Alerry Wives of Windsor’ is, alas! no more “educational” or “elevating” than Rabelais It is a riotous farce, a gallery of whimsical figures, tho very essence of Shakespeare in his broadest mood —in the very spirit ol burlesque as it was understood in Elizabethan times. This very fact appears to give weight to tho lairly well aullienticated report that Queen Elizabeth was so intrigued with the exploits of Ealstaff as soldier in ‘King Henry tlie Fourth,’ that she expressed the desire to Shakespeare to see the fat knight in the role of lover. Hence ‘The Alerry Wives of Windsor.’ In the role of Ealstaff, Air Wilkie slum Id have a part after his own heart, while Aliss Hunter-Watts has an excellent vehicle for her talents in that of Mistress Ford. Particular interest will attach to the appearance of Alexander Marsh, a well-known English Shakespearean actor new to Dunedin, as Alaster Ford, and to that of Aliss Hilda Scurr, a native of this city, as Mistress Quickly.