STAGELAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 27, 23 April 1927, Page 20 (Supplement)

STAGELAND

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE Now Playing-.—“Xo, Xo, Nanette” (Elsie Prince). May 7-May 13. —“Crooks, Ltd.” (University Students). July 2-July 16.—“ Lady Be Good.” Coming “Meet the Wife” and “The Best People.” “Tell Mw More.” Renee Kelly in “The Last of Mrs. Cheney,” “Daddy Longlegs,” and other pieces. “Rose Marie.” Nellie Bramley Co., in several plays. LITTLE THEATRE MOVEMENT Now Playing: “You Never Can Tell” THE ROMANTIC GESTURE MADGE TITHERAGE GIVES HER IDEAS ON THE ENGLISH STAGE TO-DAY Last, week I reprinted an article by S. 1\ B. Mats on “ What’s wrong with the English stage ? ” In the following article Madge Titherage gives her ideas about the stage today. The sub-title of this article is not “ What’s Wrong With The Stage.” For I am not one of those croakers who think that the English drama is about to die of inanition, or the cocktail comedy, or the American invasion, or anything else. Within my experience, and I am proud to say that I am prewar, the stage has never been stronger than it is to-day.

But there has been a change, and though in some respects that change has been for the better, in other respects I think it may have been for the worse. The modern comedy so often takes place within four walls, and above all, within the four walls of a West End drawing-room. The drama has acquired the manners of that dainty but rather finnicky environment. Obviously, well-behaved persons restrain themselves in a drawing-room; they may even strive to obliterate themselves. Or, if they adopt ‘bold’ attitudes, as sometimes they do, it is boldness which hides rather than expresses emotion. And so deep has this bitten into the bones of some of my youngest colleagues that even in the rare specimens of romantic comedies the drawingroom remains. Sometimes it is right that it should remain. In the piece (“The Queen was in the Parlour”) I am playing in just now, the fun is (and the tragedy) that the Parisian drawing-room collides violently with Ruritania. But even in this costume stuff you may find some bold rover tapping his sword as if it were a cigar-ette-case and calling for more blood as though a Martini were in question. ASHAMED TO BE STRONG They say that a little Shakespeare goes a long way—and it does, to save an anctor from this weakness. You soon find that you dare not underact “Romeo and Juliet,” that you cannot play the Emotional! Who dare be emotional in a drawing-room? You would be afraid of knocking over a glass or an ash-tray. And a large gesture, the large romantic gesture that I love, would almost certainly knock the walls down. And sometimes I dream of one of us taking his or her courage in both hands—and arms—and knocking down those walls. They would fall so easily; it needs no trumpet of Joshua, they are only canvas on wooden frames. Yes, brilliant as the talk is, and ingenious the construction in a modern comedy, sometimes I do find the atmosphere a little stifling. It is not its wildness, but is tameness that I object to. It is so afraid of violence that it is ashamed to be strong. But Shakespeare, they tell us, does not pay in the West End: I wonder! Anyhow, few managers will stage it, and we must look to the dramatists now practising to give us back the romantic gesture. They can do it; they have not lost the knack. And you need not tell me that the public has lost its appetite. I shan’t believe you. The public love my mythological Queen, and it is quite as much their love for the past as it is their love for Madge Titherage, dear as they have always been to me. The love of romance is eternal, and it is never so keen as in an age such as this, when we are straight-jacketed in covention, even when it is a cocktail convention. People still love a grande passion, the conflict of high emotion, and even the expression of it in a physical conflict on the stage. Also they love colour, unfamiliar scenes with men and women striding (not mincing) through them a little over life size. But whether the scenes are coloured or plain, are unfamiliar or commonplace, I think the public like to see the actors in them use large gestures and speak out. A PROTEST The drawing-room plays have been popular enough, and deservedly so, but I think the most popular were those which threatened to break down those walls. They were nearly all a protest, and in nearly all of them there was an ‘invasion.’ In any case, they are a fashion, and romance is more than a habit —it is a fundamental desire. No doubt it would be impossible to revive the mannerisms of the past; they would strike a modern audience as funny. We should have to invent a new romantic gesture, more in keeping with what a modern audience takes for reality. And that can be done. One of our very greatest actresses, Sybil Thorndike, has a romantic gesture as large and sweeping as any I have seen since first I went to the play, and there is no doubt of the public’s enthusiasm. But no doubt the new romance will be played more quietly than it was of old. It will not tear passion to tatters, and it will remember the lesson of ‘team-work,’ ensemble, which is the best contribution of the moderns to the technique of the stage. THE ETERNAL MOMENT But it will tell a story of human beings in emotional conflict, and it will tell it boldly, and show that emotion at its climax instead of only in its everyday flow or at its ebb. In real life, drama does not happen every minute of our day, or even every day of our year; perhaps, not once every year of our earth-wandering.

And the Aask of a stage-play is, not to exhibit a slab of life, but to show how out of the ordinary rises the extraordinary, how the even pulse quickens to a gallop, so that the slow crawl of time is forgotten and we touch the eternal moment, for which, indeed, we all live. Drama has no meaning for me if it does not give that thrill, that challenge to life and death, and no dramatist can give it to us who is afraid of romance and the romantic gesture; the foot out, and the head up, and the arms spread wide! “The Last of Mrs. Cheyney,” Frederick Lonsdale’s delightful play, will

open in Wellington on May 18. Renee Kelly will play Mrs. Cheyney. The system of trying plays out in the English provinces before taking them to London is becoming more and more general. Flays running in London which were originally first seen by provincial audiences include “Rookery Nook,” “The Blue Comet,” “The Blue Mazurka,” “Lido Lady,” “Queen High,” 1 “The Ghost Train,” “My Son John,” “Sunny,” “The Gold Diggers,” “Princess Charming” and “The Apache.” Production in the provinces may not ensure success, but it at least prevents complete—and generally expensive—failure in London. “White Cargo” has been revived in London with Horace Hodges and Dorie Sawyer in the roles of doctor and vamp respectively.

Why are some plays banned and others passed for public performance? The Lord Chamberlain recently refused to licence a play called “The Legacy,” which Phyllis IS?eilson-Terry proposed to stage in London. “The story is of an illegitimate girl, who finds her father and had revenge upon him,” Miss Neilson-Terry explained. She added: “There is no questionable love scene and what the censor could have thought immoral I cannot see.” The Lord Chamberlain, admittedly, sometimes has a very difficult and delicate task In passing what he shall, or shall not, permit to be played on a public stage, writes the theatrical correspondent of “The Daily Mail.” Managers, Basil Dean, for example, who some time ago failed to obtain a licence for “Desire Under the Elms” and “Young Woodley,” both done in the United States, and authors, Noel Coward, for instance, who a few months ago was refused a licence for one of his plays, sometimes tilt against the censorship. On the whole, however, the system works quite broadmindedly and abreast of the times in which we are living. In “Broadway,” which depicts life behind the scenes of an American cabaret, girls go about the stage in surprising absence of clothing. In “The Marquise,” children of the same mother but of different fathers are formally betrothed until the mother comes upon the scene and

puts her foot down. In “The Gold Diggers” chorus girls are shown as a pack of intensive diggers into the pocket of every man who comes along. In “The Constant Nymph” the heroine runs away with a married man and is shown on the point of disrobing in an hotel bedroom. After Bernard Shaw, how many stage writers are there in this country who are entitled to be counted as dramatists? asks a writer in the “Daily Mail.” The question was a topic among a little group of people, including one of our most accomplished actors and a man who writes plays with enormous success, the other evening. Shaw, we agreed, stands by himself, and the writer of plays dropped a bomb into the discussion by insisting that there is only one other British author who really—judging by past standards —has the right to be regarded as an established and secure dramatist. He named XV. Sonierset Maugham. It was held that

there are about 10 authors who have a right to be considered as being dramatists, among them Frederick Lonsdale, Sean O’Casey, James Bernard Fagan, Eden Phillpotts and Noel Coward —although the last-named evoked lively discussion. “The only real bit of drama he has written so far was the last act of ‘The Vortex,’ ” someone said. “And there, despite the fact that there are forty-odd millions of people in the country, you just about exhaust the list,” said the actor. “The Wicked Earl,” which was chosen by Cyril Maude as his farewell play on the English stage, ran for only a few weeks.

Clarice Hardwicke is a quaint second heroine in “The Desert Song,” the successor to “Rose Marie” at the Drury Lane Theatre, London. She was through New Zealand with Lee White and Clay Smith some years ago.

With the enterprise for which the progressive J. C. Williamson Company has achieved an enviable reputation, many of the world’s best musical and dramatic artists have been engaged for Australian and New Zealand tours. One of the most notable was that of the famous English actress, Renee Kelly and company for the production of the sensational comedy', “The Last of Mrs. Cheyney.” In London this intriguing and mystifying play proved one of the outstanding successes of the year. Sir Gerald du Mauri er and Gladys Cooper, two of London’s most famous artists, appeared in the principal roles and this mysterious “crook” play was witnesed by packed houses nightly. Miss Kelly has been lauded for her wonderfully artistic portrayal of the principal character in this play of surprises.

Elsie Janis, the American actress and mimic, is to tour Australia shortly. She will be remembered by many New Zealanders who saw her during the war at the Palace Theatre, London.

It is stated that future programmes on the Fuller circuit will be run on the all-revue principle. What individual acts there are will be subdivided in between the revue items as part of the general programme. “The plays which are being produced in New York are filthy,” said Matheson Lang, the actor, when he arrived in Liverpool on his return from a Canadian tour. “The same kind of plays are produced in Paris, but the French have a delicate air which seems to hide the filth. The Americans, however, just hang it out in a rough kind of way which makes the plays loathsome. The stage in New York is in a terrible condition and the stuff that is going well over there is horrible.”

Pauline Frederick received a great reception on the first night of

“Madame X” in London. One critic wrote: “She was splendid in the last scene of all —the trial scene. There was mute anguish in her acting then. And when at last she most conveniently died, kissed by her son, whom she had deserted so long ago, wept over by her husband, whom she had basely deserted, her pathos, always restrained, brought tears to the eyes of many an emotional woman. When the curtain fell on the play, onlj r to be raised again and again on the company, the applause was loud enough to be heard for an exceptional distance. There were ‘floral tributes’ as well as cheers. And Miss Frederick showed herself the complete actress till the end. She even convinced her admirers that she was so overcome by her reception that she could not speak without sobbing.” The drama is evidently going to the cats, writes “Lud” in the: Sydney “Bulletin.” James White, of London I Daly’s Theatre, affirms that “There i are free fights nightly behind the

scenes between jealous actresses.” He made the remark while defending: a claim brought against his management by an American actress who, although getting £l3O a week, had been taken out of the cast of the musical piece “Yvonne” because, as she put it her work overshadowed that of the principal dame. The case, in which the lady recovered substantial damages, was a prelude to a similar action launched by Lizzie Pechy, who after playing lead in "The Blue Mazurka" in its provincial run. was displaced by Gladys Moncrieff. There were plenty of jealous actresses behind the scenes at Daly’s in the brave days of George Edwardes, but that suave showman never allowed matters to culminate in hair-pulling. Somerset Maugham, probably the most co.nsixtently successful of modern dramatists, is—so he says—giving up the stage, writes “C. Ockney” in the ‘'Bulletin.” He proposes to finish one more play and then devote himself to short-story writing, “which is much better fun.” As he must have made a lot of money at both pursuits he can afford to indulge his whim. His two latest pieces are successful in America and England respectively. “The Constant. Wife” is one of the season’s notable hits in New York with Ethel Barrymore in the lead: and at London Playhouse Gladys Cooper is the star of “The Letter.” After the withdrawal of “The Fake” in Melbourne, Maurice Moscovitch will stage “The Ringer,” the sensational “crook” play. Patrick Cur wen, who has been released from his London role to play there, will arrive next week. * * * The Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company has concluded its long and highly successful Sydney season. It will go straight to Adelaide for a three weeks’ season. A visit to Perth will precede the return to Melbourne. * * * George Baxter has arrived in Sydney from America to take a prominent part in “The Green Hat,” which Leon Gordon will produce after the run of “Tea for Three.” This will be Mr. Gordon’s last work in Australia. He will set out for England after the first performance of the piece, in which Judith Anderson will be Iris. * * * When Allen Wilkie returns to Melbourne within a year’s time, he will have a repertoire of about 18 Shakespearean plays. “Besides restoring much of the old repertoire, I intend to include three that are new,” said Mr. Wilkie recently in a statement setting out his plans. “These are ‘All’s Well that Ends Well,’ ‘Coriolanus,’ and ‘Richard ll.’ I hope to restore soon the productions of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor,’ ‘Othello’ and ‘Hamlet.’ Other plays will be ‘Julius Caesar,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and ‘The Tempest.’ ”

Massed dancing, a mathematicallydrilled ar.d gorgeously-attired chorus, 300 Foreign Legionaries, who march and counter march in the Moroccan desert, requiring the full depth of Drury Lane’s huge stage, formed the culmination to a series of brilliant spectacles in “The Desert Song,” which opened at the famous theatre last night, states a message to the Sydney “Sun.” The plot is strong enough to challenge the record-breaker, “Rose Marie,” without the music. A French general’s son, pretending to be a halfwitted nincompoop in home life, joins a band of chivalrous brigands as a sort of super-sheik, and starts setting wrongs right. His fiancee, believing him insane, arranges to wed his rival. Then there comes an abduction, followed by adventures in a harem and music that everybody will be whistling. * * * “The Brisbane and Rockhampton theatres are the most beautiful I have

ever seen,” declared Ella Shields, the vaudeville artist, in an interview upon her return to England from a world tour. “We have a wrong conception of New York’s movie fans,” she said. “The majority of the films are exhibited before scanty audiences. Most of the New York cabarets are entirely depraved and the less said about them the better. Finger-snapping chorus girls, dancing the Charleston and Blackbottom, are already taboo in the United States. It is a pity we still rave about them.” “When I first went to Berlin,” writes Reita Nugent, the Australian acrobatic dancer to a friend in Sydney, “I used to go into a shop to buy a yard of crepe de chine and come out with a candlestick —and glad to get it!” But Reita is not the sort to let a little thing like a language get her down. “Now I can speak German quite fluently, having taken lessons during my four months in Berlin, two months in Vienna and odd weeks in Munich and Bavaria.” On the subject of

stage clothes in Berlin, Reita writes she has never seen quite so little of anything. The Australian girls would be considered to be absolutely muffled up—even the most daring of them. “I visited a music factory run by my German managers, Hopmann and Czernz, where you can buy pianos which change to organs and more pianos which, by pressing an electric bulb, you can hear a jazz band with four violins, a saxophone and a drum. Give me that one!” Miss Nugent has appeared in New Zealand in several J.C.W. productions.

An attendant’s mistake in allowing pit ticket-holders to fill the last row of the stalls resulted in an extraordinary display of temper at the first night of Somerset Maughan’s “Constant Wife” at the Strand Theatre, London. Appeals from the stage and promises of plush seats on the second night failed to dislodge the entrenched pitites, but the manager solved the problem by calilng on men to volunteer to give up their seats to women ticket-holders. The play, giving a new aspect of “the eternal triangle,” closed in disorder, the leading lady. Fay Compton, thanking “the civil members of the audience.”

Jessamine Newcombe is English by way of America. She has arrived in Australia to play in “Cradle Snatchers.” “In U.S.A. they pronounce mv name as though it were a mine. Still, if the money’s good, I should worry!” She started a career which refused to be checked by stern parental disapproval, in the back row of the chorus. Jessamine ran away from home to go on the stage, but ran back home again to show mother her first pair of tights. But the stage had got her! “I played with Oscar Asche in ‘The Walls of Jericho,* and with Sir Herbert Tree in ‘Captain Swift.’ What a dear he was!” Jessamine meant Sir Herbert. “Then I went to U.S.A. with ‘Eliza Comes to Stay’ for H. V. Esmond. In America I played with Henry Jewett in a lot of Shaw’s plays, some Pinero and Galsworthy.” Miss Newcombe played in “Scandal” in New York and not long ago was in “Little Miss Bluebeard” and “Mozart.”

Thirza Rogers, now in Sydney, talks on the dance as it is taught in the Russian ballet: “The Russians do not teach you to use your face. All they say is, ‘Be Happy.* You learn your steps in the class. When you have mastered your steps you forget all about them. They teach you that the arms are the most important part of the body in the dance. While your feet do the steps your arms interpret the meanings of the dance. The head must follow the arms—always. That is so rarely understood. Too much facial expression will detract from the dance itself. Be happy and the right expression will come. The smile will break over your face, dance a moment in the eyes—go, like a fleeting butterfly—and come again.” * * * “ Lady Windermere’s Fan,” is regarded by Ernst Lubitsch, the director, as one of the most perfect plays ever written. In his direction of the film version of this famous Oscar Wilde play, he has of necessity discarded the brilliant epigrams of Wilde and substitued action. The audible wit of "Wilde is changed to the visible wit of Lubitsch. Irene Rich plavs the part of Mrs. Erlynne, the sophisticated woman of the world, who returns to London after many indiscretions and is determined to enter society Way McAvoy plays the part of Ladv Windermere, with Bert Lytell as her admiring husband.

Lovers of George Bernard Shaw shoifid not miss the Little Theatre Society s production of “You Never Can Tell, at the Town Hall. The last performance will be given this evening.

„ ™. e M ttle Tl ? eatre Society has nothing to grumble at regarding the enthusiasm of its patrons. On Thursday evening there was a tendency to hold up the action of the play. “You Never Can Tell” seems to me to have been the ideal first production under the management of Mr. Kenneth Brampton, because it was of such a high standard (forgive me) that “you never can tell” to what heights the society will go during the next few years.

“No, No, Nanette” is enjoying a wonderful run at His Majesty’s Theatre, where Elsie Prince and Jimmy Godden are holding high revel every evening. Talking of records, it is breaking a record for Auckland for a long run. Over a fortnight in a New Zealand city seems too good to be true. * * * The Four Little Kellys, a family of youngsters who know more about music than the average grown-up, are now entertaining patrons of the Regent Theatre. Their musical act is one of the best ever put over by child performers. 6 * * * “It was serious for me. when I found that I was putting on flesh and I decided that something must be done about it,” says Elsie Prince, the charming Nanette in “No, No, Nanette.” at His Majesty’s Theatre. “I recollected that some time ago in Paris I had heard what was claimed to be an infallible remedy for rude flesh and I decided to put it to the test. In one month I had reduced eight pounds and after that the results were even quicker. I have written it all down in a little book which has been brought out. I have called it ‘Health and Beauty,* because there were other secrets for being wellkempt and healthful in it.” Had you the face of Helen of Troy and a stout figure you would not be counted beautiful to-day. This is the age of the slender woman. Fat is taboo! ! Why be fat, then? You needn’t! No, not one month more than to-day. A month will work the miracle if you have the right recipe. Elsie Prince, the bright principal star of “No, No, Nanette,” was faced with the enormity of getting fat. For her the consequences would have been serious. So Elsie put on her considering cap and got down to business. Now she is slim and has written a book on how to do it.

THE LONG RUN

SOME “MARATHON" PLAYS The curtain has been rung down cn “Rose Marie” after a two-years’ run in London. It is said that during that time 4,000,000 people saw the show. Besides large dividends to shareholders, salaries and expenses amounting to £460,000 were paid, and royalties to copyright holders accounted for £66,000. But a two-years’ “season” is by no means a record run. For many years the comedy “Our Boys” held the record. That amusing play ran for four years in London. Curiously enough the writer played in “A Scrap of Paper” in Sydney with the two ladies who played the principal roles in the famous production of “Oui Boys.” They were Amy Roselle and Kate Bishop. They had not been again associated in a play till they met in Sydney. They said that during the four-years’ run of “Our Boys” a rehearsal was called every month to bring the actors back to the textso apt were they to paraphrase the author. “Charley's Aunt” had an enormou* vogue, and Penley ran it in London until it had eclipsed the “Our Boys record by one performance. Then he closed the run, sick to death of the deadly • monotony of playing the same part for so long. But “Chu Chin Chow” holds the world’s belt for longevity. During the war years it became an institution y* London. It ran for five years, Sir Herbert Tree, by the way, said h 0 failed to see anything remarkable in its long run. “It is always so refreshingly ‘nue.* ” “The Farmer’s Wife,” now- at tb® Court Theatre, London, is in its flfd l year, and is likely to break the “Chu Chin Chow” record. In Australia we have had some long runs, but musical plays seem to bave done better than the drama. “Our Miss Gibbs” had a very long reign, only eclipsed by the 317 consecutive performances of “Rose Marie’ y* Sydney. As far back as 1880-1 Fille du Tambour Major” achieved tn then record run of 101 nights at tn» Melbourne Onera House.