KILLED BY LAUGHTER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 404, 13 December 1932, Page 7

KILLED BY LAUGHTER

TRAGIC PLAY TURNED TO HILARIOUS COMEDY. Berlin, Saturday. A play which' seems to be the funniest tragedy ever written was the subject of a lawsuit before a B'erlin Court to-day. Intended to he anrear- , nest and melancholy piece, it was> produced in August at a theatre in Unter den Linden, where itwas received with hilarious mirth from the audience until, at the tragic denouement in the last act, the well-known actor who played the leading part himself broke into loud la.ughter. I One person did not join in the prevailing mirth — the producer; and he to-day sued the actor concerned for 1600 marks damages, alleging that his ill-timed wirth alone had caused the play's first night to be also its last. The defendant urged that the play was not killed hy him but was already dead, and produced newspaper criticisrn which raised in Court an echo of the first night's merriment. The Bench, accepting his version, dismissed the case and awarded costs against the plaintiff, who, it is, understood, does not yet see the joke. At a performance of the opera "Sa- ' lorne" ,at Elberfeld on Saturday the j audience, by way of contrast, actually dissolved in tears. These were not caused hy events on the .stage, however, but by tear-gas introduced, it is supposed, by race-conscious Nazis in protest against th'e appearance of a singer from the Philippines in the name part.