Plays and Pictures.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 53, 15 March 1912, Page 6

Plays and Pictures.

"All the world's a stage," but most of the farces are played, by politicians.

If on the stage >oii long to main, Change your .mind, and st.ay at home

Somerset Mnughaili's coiiie<lv-<liaina, "Lady Kredorick,' , is certainly siniirt and clever, brillianb,in ~spots, but with a lesser lady than Kthvl Irving in the name part, and with an actor less convincing than Stephen Kwart as Pa ratlin o Foulds, it lrtifrht easily be ranked 'with tli© very many comedies which have never quite got .there, but just "missed the bus" of greatness. It is clew thnt it is because. Miss Irving and Mr. Ewart are.artists with ideals, and make of Lady Frederick and Paradine Fouldes personalities rather than mere stage characters, that the piece seems so good.

"Everywoman," says Sydney "Sun," is an unusual ftind of play. It is not Shakespeare, and it <is not John Bunyan ? but it is some highly-colored_ moralising which may be a good tonic for Sydney between "The Oingako" and the pantomime.

The four Windsor chorister boys, now appearing with Fasola at the Wellington Theatre Royal, are Australian-bred youths, who can sing some, especially James Ilea, the soloist of the quartet, Wiiose voice is sweet and of charming quality, and quite a pleasure to listen to. The boys are a boom.

A Sydney paper, reviewing the performances of. the two principals in "My Partner," soys: Mr. Walter Baker's musical-speaking voice 19 ac mellifluous as ever. It is his subdued manner, his quiet, natural way, that make every character he creates a real flesh and blood human being. Of Joo Saunders, digger, the actor made a man of emotioaial parts and la r;j;e-heartod sympathies. Ho made the audience feel his emotion, and from a commonplace type created a great character. In this artistic work he was ably seconded by Miss Frances Ross as Mary Brandon. Miss Ross lifts melodrama out of the rut of ranting, and makes her stage creations the perfection of dramatic art.

After having been in several original London productions and seen the way the stage-manager mutilated them, Miss Sybil Arundale says, "It's a wise librettist who knows his own musical comedy."

In "Evorywomnn," the character of Puff is a press agent, winch is unjust. A press agent should by rights double the parts of Modesty and Truth.

"Worker" readers in Waihi and Thames can be well advised to spend their evenings—or at least some of them—in viewing Hayward's Pictures. Varied programmes are served up, and tho management has always some "scoops of the screen" wheicwith to delight patrons.

To say that an actress is wholly delightful is the pleasantest form of criticism that one can be called upon to make, and tin's can be truly said of Ethel Irving. The charms of Miss Irving's personality have captured all playgoers at the Wellington Opera House as elsewhere. We have seen lier in light comedy—to-night (Friday, .March 15) wo are to see. another side of her undoubted genius—in "The Witness for the Defence." Immediately she enters the eery and mysterious tent of the opening act, in which such tragic happenings are to take place, tho audience feels her magnetic influence, comments a contemporary. Miss Irving is natural —she- has no stage tricks, slTe needs none. Her own art sways her audience, and holds them till she makes them feel with her each phase of the drama through which she is passing. And so, when she cries, in tho audience, too, are to be heard tho suggestive sounds that indicate how the deep emotions of tho people have been touched.

Of modern mystery-mongers and won-der-workers there is no end. The world is full of them. Wo have had 'em by tlio bushel, seen 'em by the score — "Marvels of Magic," "Peerless Prestidigitators," "Wonders of Wizardry," "Leviathans of Legerdemain," "Monarchs of Mystery," "Stars of Sleight-of-hand," "Conjurers without Compeer," and what not. (Among them we have mot not a.few fakes of fakirs, crooks of conjurers, liars of legerdomainiacs, but, that is neither here nor there.) Now wo have in our midst "The Great and Only Fasola, tho Famous Indian Fakir." He's at the- Wellington Theatre -Royal, and ho can hold up his end with the best of 'cm— European, American, Indian, Chinese, or Egyptian —white, black, brown, or brindled. Fasola has a first-class routine- of tricks and illusions, some new, some, old, but all executed with neatness and despatch, like tho jobs at the. "Worker" printery. Fasola materialises solid substances out of the eiroumambient atmosphere, and causes them to disappear whence they came without turning a hair. How lie. does it is up to our readers to find out. We wouldn't give him away for a portfolio in the reconst meted Ward Cabinet. Anyway,

Ho S'ftcin'st to have the power of giving

wmgs To watches, cards aad girls, and such-

like things ; In tho black art lie delights to revel, In fact, boibo say he's the vory devil.