TILLY AT MAJESTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 232, 23 May 1932, Page 6

TILLY AT MAJESTIC

SUCCESSFUL PRODUCTION OF COMEDY BY TAURANGA PLAYERS LARGE AUDIENCE DELIGHTED The Tauranga Amateur players fully upheld their reputation in Rotorua when they presented "Tilly of Bloomsbury" at the Majestic Theatre on Friday. Under the direction of Mr G. H. A. Wills the play progressed from opening scene to final curtain without a noticeable hitch, the large cast — there are 16 characters in the play — proving themselves, almost without exception, masters of the spirit of their parts. The story of the play is the familiar one of the love of the son and heir of a wealthy and snobbish family for a daughter of the people, but Ian Hay has invested it with a humour quite his own. Dick Mainwaring (Mr. J. Laurenson), the son of an easy going squire whose heart is sound, but who is dominated by his wife, Lady Marian, introduces Tilly Welwyn (Mrs H. Pattie) to his family at their country home without warning, -having forgotten to post a letter announcing his engagement. She is not exactly welcomed by Lady Marian oi* Dick s sister Sylvia (Miss Mary Gabites) and even his father, though he acknowledges Tilly' s charm, is more than a little stand-offish. Constance Damer (Miss Dorothy Wills) a friend of the family and a pal of Dick's comes to the rescue and takes Tilly under her wing. Tilly, having her own family pride, calls the ready wit of the Londoner to her aid, and playing the Mninwarine's same, enlarges upon

the circumstances that her father is a former Cambridge don and inherited the house in which they live in Bloomsbury and invents a butler, a car and most of the other appurtenances of gentility as understood _ by Lady Marian, who accepts an invitation to tea from Tilly's mother.

The scene changes to Russel Square, Bloomsbury, where Mrs Welwyn (Mrs F. W. Baker) Tilly and her sister Amelia (Miss Eleanor Broad) are preparing to receive the Mainwaring family while Lucius Welwyn (Mr. P. Lumley) confines his own efforts to helpful advice. Welwyn who has brilliant intellectual gifts and no backbone, has made a mess of life, whisky being his trouble, and Mrs Welwyn, socially his inferior keeps the home together by letting lodgings. She is the typical London lodging-house . keeper, hard-working, . competent, has more than a little difficulty with her aitches and worships her good-for-nothing husband, and Mrs Baker plays the part with real brilliance. In the iiiidst of the preparations a bailiffi, Samuel Stillbottle (Mr. G. H. A. Wills) arrives on the scene, to the consternation of the family.^ Tilly, however, rises to the occasion and Stillbottle, since he cannot be got rid of, is pressed into service as the butler of whom she had boasted. The part gives Mr. Wills an opportunity for broad humour and he makes the most of it. The Mainwaring family arrives and the tea party is progressing more than a little heavily. The lady visitors obviously suspect that all is not as Tilly had led them to believe despite the fact that her father proves to have been a college chum of Mainwaring's. Grandma Banks (Mrs H. P. Butts), Mrs Welwyn's mother, whom Tilly had described as "one of the Bankses of Cambridgeshire or Bedfordshire, or somewhere between the two comes unexpectedly into the room. She is 81, has always been "respectable" in the Victorian sense and is under no illusions regarding her son-in-law, who compares but ill with her late husband^, a plumber, and an unf ortunate remai k concerning that much abused trade draws from her an expression in detail of her sentiments in a piercing aged treble which is a masterpiece of characterisation on the part of Mrs Butts. This, of course, ends the party, which breaks up in an atmosphere of icy politeness on the part of the Mainwaring women and more or less disguised distress on the part of most of the others and in perhaps the most successfully handled moment in the whole play. Next morning Lady Marian returns with her unwilling husband to break her son's engagement to Tilly. True to type, she offers to buy what she wants and gets thoroughly snubbed by Tilly, who givss what she holds too precious to sell. In this scene Mrs Pattie rises to her part and for a few moments overcomes a certain stiffness which otherwise handicapped her performance. In the midst of her distress Constance Damer arrives and shows the stuff of which she is mad urging Tilly to fight for her happiness. Miss Wills plays her part with naturalness and sympathy and would have done justice to a more important character. Stillbottle, once more the bailiff, whose occupation has made him something of a philosopher, is alone in the house when Dick arrives and the two arrange things to their mutual satisfaction and prepare the happy 'ending, which is achieved when Dick returns with his luggage as the new lodger. Among the minor characters, Miss Broad, as Amelia Welwyn, was an outstanding success and like Miss Wills, would have sustained a much more important role. Major V. J. Scantlebury, as the Mainwaring's butler was entirely satisfactory and Messrs H. Monro (a curate), F. Baddeley (an Indian law student) and S. Mactavish (another law student), the two latter lodgers in the Welwyn house, supplied the comedy note at intervals. The large audience showed its appreciation in generous measure and thoroughly approved Mr Will's suggestion, when thanking them on behalf of the players, that, like the small boy at the party, "they would come again if they were asked."