N.Z. LAMB

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 98, 16 July 1927, Page 22

N.Z. LAMB

ELSIE PRINCE FEARS FOR HER FIGURE. SCOTSMEN PAY TO SEE THE SHOW IN DUNEDIN

TN a chatty letter to friends in Australia, Elsie Prince, who is at present playing in “Lady, Be Good,” in Auckland, goes into ecstacies over New Zealand lamb. “They call it God’s Own Country, but New Zealand is a perilous place for a girl like me. D’you remember I wrote a book, how not to grow fat?

Many a poor actress grows fat in New Zealand.

“It isn’t laziness, because you have to hurry up, doing the one-night and twonight towns. Some nights it is a tough hustle. Get undressed one side of the bed, and straight away roll to the other side to get dressed again. Rolling keeps the adipose down. "No, sir; what makes ’em get fat is the New’ Zealand lamb and mutton. It’s a tempting and juicy meat —better than your Sydney tooth-smasher chops. I look at a New Zealand loin, and I want to eat the lot. Then I say to myself, Lady, Be Good,’ and practice being a near-abstainer from roast lamb. “This country isn’t; so very Scotch. At Dunedin (where the letter was written) they pay to see the show*. They treat me as if I were a Queen of Scots. “And I met a Scotchman who cracked a joke. He said he wanted to see me play Boy in a pantomime, because I was ‘Good Form.’ “I suppose ‘The Sheik’ has filled the St. James with fierce Arab passions. Oh, well, when I come back, they’ll have to watch a ‘Lady, Be Good.’ ”

old theatre, is a young man who learned a great deal about dramatic writing at Harvard. The proof of the truth of what I have been saying for so long, about the necessity of teaching the would-be playwright something of the technique of writing plays, is in the number of successful American plays which have been brought to London and have made a hit here. Take ‘Broadway,’ for instance. I think that is one of the most brilliant melodramas I have ever seen. What our stage suffered from for so long was plays with too much chatter and no plot. Now the public will not go to such plays. They want to be amused and excited or thrilled. What struck me most when I returned to London was the amount of drawing-room melodrama on the stage to-day. Such plays as ‘lnterference,’ ‘The Joker,’ ‘The Ringer,’ all have plenty of plot and incident.”

There are worlds between Shakespeare and “Abie’s Irish Rose,” but an American actor has spanned them. He is Joseph Greenwald, who jumped from playing Abie’s Jewish father to Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.”

Everything in “Wliitebirds,” a new London revue, goes into extremes. The cast is terrific in terms of talent — their material is often very poor. The scenery is either gorgeous or fiambuoyant; but so much time is needed to prepare it that half the show happens in front of flat curtains. The whole of the first half of “Whitebirds,” except the single Chevalier item, was so flat that it was like a gaudy, expensive poultice, says a London critic. Then, after the interval, a superbly treated picture of Montmarte, with M. Anton Dolin and Mile. Ninette de Valois dancing, electrified us into enthusiasm. Lady Duff Gordon’s fashion parade was splendiferous, at any rate, and an exceedingly clever imitation of “Blackbirds” kept interest awake. More Maurice Chevalier brought more and more cheers; and more tenth-rate cabaret stuff brought more jeers and limp boredom. Chevalier, his French associates, Air. Ed. Lowry and the chorus, again kept at bay toward the end what at one moment looked like becoming a mild riot in the gallery. It was a fantastic evening, in which the triumphs were Maurice Chevalier’s and Yvonne Vallee’s; the tragedy Maisie Gay’s, because she was .wasted on dull numbers and sketches.