ENTERTAINMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1894, 24 October 1918, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS.

“PEG O’ MY HEART.” There is something about “Peg O’ My Heart,” the record-breaking play that J. and N. Tail will stage at the Down Hall on Tuesday next, that none of the critics in America or England have yet been able to fathom. On the face of it, they all say, there seems to be nothing extraordinary about Hartley Manners’ comedy. Yet it has been running in one London theatre - for nearly two years, and played 004 nights in one theatre in New York. Laureatte Taylor, the author’s wife, and the original Peg, acted the part 1,400 times before sheer fatigue and stalenoss compelled her to give up to another. One well-known London critic said that Peg’s success was due to the fact that the comedy was a comedy of youth, bubbling and vivacious, and full of the sheer healthy joy of living, and that so it suits the young and brings back memories of earlier, happier days to the middle-aged and old. Charles Erohmann once said: “I want a play where the girl thinks that the boy sitting beside her is like the hero, and the boy sees his own girl in the heroine.” “Peg o’ My Heart" is perhaps like that, Dublin and Belfast papers naturally put down the popularity of the play to the Irish vein that runs through it,-and to the delightful brogue of the leading lady, Sara Allgood, and her lively Irish ways. The play is plainly written. There is nothing startling or outrageous or risky in “Peg o’ My Heart.” Mr Hartley Manners, the man who wrote it, has made a huge fortune out of it already. He was merely a young actor, and Peg was really his wife’s idea. Laurette Taylor has often wondered why there were sheaves of plays with Irish heroes but none with Irish heroines. With Mr Manners she evoked the idea, and lie and (hoy concocted the comedy between (hem. Incidentally romance entered into the association, and marriage followed, -witli the result that the husband became quickly famous, while his wife made her wonderful success in the part. The box plan is now open at Mrs Teviotdale's. Intending patrons are advised to secure their seats at once, and avoid disappointment at the doors.