STAGELAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 80, 25 June 1927, Page 22

STAGELAND

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE

July 2-July 16.—“ Lady Be Good.” July 19 -July 27.—J. C. Williamson v audeville. July 28-August 18.—“ The Last of Mrs Oheyney,” “Daddy Longlegs” and “Polly With a Past,” Renee Kelly. STRAND THEATRE Now Playing.—Humphrey Bishop Company. CONCERT CHAMBER July 32, 13, 14.—“ The Cassilis Engagements,” Little Theatre Society. COMING Alan Wilkie in Shakespeare. “Tell Me More.” “Rose Marie.” “La Mascotte,” Auckland Amateur Operatic Society. F. Reade Wauchop lias been engaged to produce “The Runaway Girl” for the New Plymouth Operatic Society. Production will take place toward the end of this year. Aucklanders are paving the way on .the Australian stage. The latest to figure in the limelight is Robert Simmons, the well-known baritone. He is understudying the principal role in “Tip Toes” in Sydney. * * * “Lady Be Good,” , which is to be played in Auckland by the “No, No, Nanette” company, beginning on July 2, is having a wonderfully popular run in the South. The new musical comedy is a dance and song show, with beautiful frocks and settings and all that a musical show needs to be a success. • * * The Auckland Little Theatre Society continues to forge ahead. The membership is increasing weekly and enthusiasm (the food of the society) runs high. Intending subscribers should apply to the secretary and anyone who wishes to play in the third production, now under consideration, should communicate with the producer, Mr. Kenneth Brampton.

It would tax the memory not a little to recall a revival so soon after production as has been the case with

“White Cargo,” says a London paper. It is just as difficult to remember a play that has filled three theatres one after another and afforded three of our best known actors an opportunity to write in their autobiographies: “When I was the Weston of ‘White Cargo.’ ”

Mario Majeroni, \yhose performance of Zoombie, an African High Priest in “Kongo,” the melodrama at the Biltmore Theatre, New York, was as deft as it was picturesque, was born in Sardinia, Italy. His family then removed to the other end of the world — Australia—and it was here that he received his early schooling, graduating with honours from Royston College, Sydney. He made his first appearance before the footlights under the management of J. C. Williamson. After a tour that encompassed every .city in Australia, he took to the road, and in this instance the road made a trip encircling the globe. Thus he made appearances in New Zealand, India, Burmah, Malay Peninsula, China,South Africa, Hawaii, South America, Canada and the United States.

Clothes on a first night in London still count. Here is a feminine account of the first night of “The Blue Train,” in London: The first of many excitements was the arrival of wellbeloved Violet Loraine, who, gowned in fuchsia pink georgette and cloaked in chinchilla, looked very handsome and very happy, too, as she acknowledged the welcoming applause, and exchanged greetings with Maisie Gay, in a smart black gown embroidered with green and silver. Then Dorothy Dickson, in white georgette, fringed with silver aiKl an ermine cloak, and Lily St. John, in a simple red chiffon dress and a magnificent sable coat, each made an effective entry into the stalls, and pretty little Vera Lennox, wearing a sapphire blue velvet and grey fox coat, and blue chiffon frock, came along to see her good looking husband, Arthur Margetson, in his new part. Mabel Sealby and Ivy St. Helier had both chosen jewel green wraps. The Duchess of Rutland, gowned in soft black and wearing a coat and turban head dress of shining gold tissue arrived with Mrs. Ansell, in a georgette dress of Madonna blue shading, and a matching and wonderfully draped cloak.

Strong criticisms of the modern drama were made in a letter from Sir Hall Caine, read at the annual luncheon of the Theatrical Managers’ Association at the Royal Adelaide Gallery, Strand. “I go to the theatre very little in these days,” the letter read,, “but I am compelled to read about the current drama in the newspapers. I am not surprised that the provineiall manager suffers heavily, both in purse and in prestige, from the utterly insincere, impure thing that now, too infrequently, goes by the name of drama. I am sure the great public in the provinces does not want this kind of muck-raking, and I should have rejoiced in an opportunity to join you in protest against the dramatic fare you are compelled to offer to your patrons. I heartily hope to see a return to the simple. national, and wholesome drama of the much-derided past.”

(By COTHURNUS .) “The Blue Mazurka,” the musical play at Daly’s Theatre, London, with Gladys Moncrieff in the lead, has passed its 100th performance. “The last stronghold of masculinity in Oxford has fallen,” says a London paper. “The Oxford University Dramatic Society, who hitherto have reserved the female parts in their plays purely for women whose profession it is to act upon a stage, have now announced that it is their wish this year to give the part of Miranda in ‘The Tempest’ to a woman undergraduate.”

A noteworthy cast has been selected to play in “The Cassilis Engagement,” St. John Hankin’s play which is to be performed by the Auckland Little Theatre Society on July 12, 13 and 14. Here are the players: Mrs. Good fellow, Mrs. Monty McCallum, Mrs. W. H. Parkes, Miss Eleanor Miller, Mr. Roberts Tole, Miss Vera Ziman, Mr. Cyril Seaward, Miss Ethel Rea, Miss Beryl Nettleton, Mr. E. W. Bullet and Mr. P. A’Deane.

The Auckland Little Theatre Society’s second production this year, "The Cassilis Engagement,” will prove good entertainment. St. John Hankins, the author, has a deft touch and is comparatively easy of interpretation. The society is fortunate in having a number of excellent amateurs and this production should prove more popular even than the Bernard Shaw piece.

London theatregoers recently witnessed a theatre event of most unusual interest in the production of a new light romantic opera written by a cathedral canon and an abbey organist. The opera is called “The Mermaid,” and Dr. Sydney Nicholson, organist and master of the choristers of Westminster Abbey, has written the music of it. The libretto is by Canon J. O. Hannay, who is novelist and playwright as well as parson, and who is, perhaps, better known by his “writing name” of George Birmingham.

Wish Wynne, who has returned to the London stage in “Double Dan,” at the Savoy, has been doing some publicity for New Zealand. She has been telling her friends about a new house she is building in Middlesex. The new house is colonial in style and has many unusual devices and conveniences. “When we returned from New Zealand my husband and I decided to build a typical New Zealand bungalow at home,” Wish Wynne said “We spent days in making plans. My special demands were for a cosy din-ing-nook and no back door. My husband demands that every room shall have coal, gas and electric fires!”

The Piccadilly Revels, the cabaret show at the Piccadilly Hotel, London, have closed down. “The reason is that elaborate cabaret shows do not pay,” one of the promoters said. “With ,individual performers demanding ’as much as £SOO a week a first-class cabaret is impossible except as an advertising stunt. This does not mean that there is no future for the cabaret. While there are 10,000 people in London who will not go to bed, some kind of amusement must be provided for them, but it will have to be on less ambitious lines.”

About 20 of the leading dramatic authors of England lunched together the other day, and it is probable that, between them, they could have mustered at least half a million pounds. The rewards of successful playwriting are five-figure bank balances; there is one established English dramatist who gets a thousand pounds on account of royalties before a play of his goes into rehearsal, and an author’s royalties are paid on the gross receipts. In London alone a popular play can easily be worth about £2OO a week to its author; in the United States it may bring him in two or three times that amount.

As Lily Elsie, who has returned to the stage after an absence of ten years, has pointed out in an English paper, comedians are changing. “Red noses and wigs are going,” she said. “Many of the comedians now wear evening clothes, and their own hair.” This is markedly ‘true. At His Majesty’s now, in the song and dance shows, there are young, clean-faced comedians, whose new methods are obviously very much to the liking of the audience. Elsewhere, too, young, slim men —the idea that a funny man should be a fat man has gone—are making theatregoers laugh. Jack Hiubert, who went straight from Cambridge to the London stage, and who heads the company which is very successfully playing “Lido Lady” at the Gaiety, was one of the first of this new school of comedians. His brother, Claude Hulbert, who was also at Cambridge, and whose amusing dancing and quiet humour are features of “Sunny” at the Hippodrome, has fol lowed in his footsteps. Jack Buchanan is another of the same type. So is Clifford Mollison, whose performance in “The Blue Mazurka,” Gladys Moncrieff’s play, at Daly’s, comes as a big, but pleasant, surprise to playgoers who have previously only known him as a “silly ass” specialist in “straight” plays.

Jimmie Taylor and Dorothy Summers, who have toured New Zealand several times on the Fuller circuit, write to soy that they are sailing- for South Africa and then on to England. For the last six months they have been working in Australia. Josie Melville, whom Auckland theatregoers remember in “Sally,’' and other pieces, plays the part, of a wife in “Lady Luck’’ in London. As there are six wives in the piece, Miss Melville has little to do except to look demure in a bridal gown. “The Ralli Twins,” as they are now known in the profession of their adoption, made their stage debut at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, recently. Their real names are the Eon. Alison and the Hon. Margaret Hore-Ruth-ven, the attractive twin daughters of Lord Ruthven. Although alike, they do not intend to follow the style of “The Dolly Sisters,” but, to strike out on a line on their own. A big holiday audience gave the sisters a rousing reception when the peer’s daughters twirled on the stage. A captivating Charleston was one of their most successful efforts. For one artistic movement the twins were dressed in shimmering silver.

Judith Anderson’s return to Australia was not a success, and she will not vamp in “Cobra” for the delectation of New Zeaalnd audiences. She has returned to her adopted America to appear under the David Belasco banner in “The Desert,” a new play.

An Englishman went back to London recently in the strange position of being recognisable by nearly every American visitor in London, and yet almost unrecognised by his own countrymen, writes a theatrical correspondent. He was Harry Reeves-Smith, one of America’s matinee idols, but Engli:/a theatregoers will have to carry their memories back 20 years to recall him. This is only his second visit to England for the last 20 years. Reference to “Who’s Who in the Theatre” will reveal that most of the three columns devoted to him have been earned by his art and popularity in the United States, though he has retained his own nationality. But most of his audiences have now forgotten that he is an Englishman. His most recent success was in “The Gold Diggers.”

Charles Morgan, London correspondent for the New York “Times,” writes the following scund criticism of “Abie’s Irish Rose,” which has just been produced in London. To speak of the making of fortunes in the theatre brings me, almost by compulsion, to “Abie’s Irish Rose.” Mo one in England asks me, “Do you think it will run over here as it did in America?” My answer to that question is “No.” It will run because its name is famous and excites curiosity; it may run a long time if the mysterious public which likes farcical Jews and made the fortune of “Potash and Perlmutter” takes it to its heart; but I cannot believe that it will endure in London for five years, or for anything approaching five years. It is desperately ingenuous and unsophisticated. You are not allowed to perceive or discover its humour; its humour is, on the contrary, thrown at you with both hands from the beginning of the evening to the end. Its appeals to sentiment — bridesmaids, the wedding march, Christmas trees, twin babies and grandparental* toys—are stale beyond the nightmares of farcical melodrama. It is so unpretentious a play that no one can be made angry by it and the gallery on the first night seemed even to enjoy it; but I will confess that by few quite harmless pieces have I ever been so bored.