STAGELAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 104, 23 July 1927, Page 22

STAGELAND

(By

COTHURNUS)

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE Now Playing—J. C. Williamson Vaudeville. July 28 to August IS.—“The Last of Mrs. Cheyney,” “Daddy Longlegs” and “Polly With a Past,” Renee Kelly. STRAND THEATRE August 5.—80 n Bon Revue Company, Robert Roberts. COMING Alan Wilkie in Shakespeare “Tell Me More.” “Rose Marie.” “Cradle Snatchers.” “Tip Toes.” “La Mascotte,” Auckland Amateur Operatic Society. Floie Allen has signed a fresh contract, which includes “a dresser,” with J. C. Williamson’s. All actresses strive for this coveted private possession. They usually share one between six. Gertrude Elliott (Lady Forbes Robertson) is playing in “This Year-Next Year” at the Everyman Theatre, London. She was here with “Woman to Woman” and several other pieces some time ago. Alan Wilkie is enjoying a successful season in Wellington with his Shakespearean Company. The Bon Bon Revue, headed by Robert Roberts, will descend on Auckland on August 5. The company, which is composed of singers, dancers and comedy folk, will appear at the Strand Theatre.

Billie Lockwood had the part of Sadie in “Rain” thrust upon her for study in case of further emergencies. It is sixty-six “sides,” and complex. She was to have come to New Zealand with the Celebrity Vaudeville, but was given the lead in “The Green Hat’* instead. In “Meet the Wife,” in London, the American comedy recently in Auckland, Constance Collier, one of the most accomplished of English actresses, appears as “the wife”—the part played here by Marian Lord—and the husband is George Tully, that neat and efficient comedy actor who was in Australia with “The Man from Toronto.” “Tell Me More,” an attractive musical play which had a most successful run in London, and pleased Australian audiences with its catchy music, bright dialogue and an infinite variety of dancing features, should make a hit in New Zealand when it reaches these shores. If Leo Franklyn, the London comedian, comes across he is sure to become popular. Few artists have achieved such popularity as Stephanie Dste (Wanda), Harriet Bennett (Rose Marie), Yvonne Banvard (Lady Jane), Frederick Bentley (Had-boiled Herman), Reginald Dandy (Jim Kenyon) and George Bryant (Wanda’s Indian husband), the leading players in “Rose Marie.” There is no doubt that their reception in New Zealand will be a cordial one, and that they will repeat the successes they have achieved on the other side of the Tasman. The company is now in Adelaide. There is a most impressive finale to the first act of “Madame Pompadour,” the J. C. Williamson production which has created enthusiasm in Australia. It is “Bow the Knee! The Pompadour —all Hail!” and is presented in the firm’s best style. “Madame Pompadour”is more than comic opera. It has all the attractiveness of the lighter pieces, and in addition possesses music equal to that of grand opera and many dramatic situations. Beppy de Vries (Madame Pompadour) plays with almost magnetic charm, while Frank Webster (the English tenor), as d’Estrades; Arthur Stigant (Calicott) and P. Cory (King Loriis). “The Garden of Eden,” adapted from the German play by Avery Hopwood, author of so many “thinice” American comedies, was produced in London recently. Here is one London reviewers criticism: I consider it symptomatic of a dull foulness that has become too common in the theatre. This play illuminates nothing; there is no veracity in it; it is vulgar in its virtue as much as in its vice; and it offers an ideal of life to young and febrile imaginations which is mean and contemptible. It is the kind of play that ought not to be written or performed. * * * The Dunedin Repertory Players are playing at His Majesty’s Theatre this evening in two pieces that have been eminently successful in London during the recent season. The first of these is from the pen of Gordon Bottomley, who is recognised as perhaps the most prominent of modern playrights, and is entitled “Gruach.” It is really a prologue to Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Macbeth.” The second is the humorous piece, “Op-o-me-Thumb,” by Frederick Fenn and Richard Pryce. Mr. A. R. Gard’ner is the producer. Laughter, thrills and surprises go to make up “The Ghost Train,” the thriller at the Criterion Theatre, Melbourne, where Betty Ross Clarke shows herself capable of interpreting the whole gamut of feminine moods. Hugh Wright, Mayne Linton, Mascotte Ralston and others all pull their weight in a piece which depends for its effect on the whole company rather than on an individual. “Two things are noticeable in London theatres nowadays,” writes a correspondent. “They are absence of applause and late arrival. The first is ascribed variously to listening-in, where applauding is futile, so one gets out of the habit; and to wrist-watches, whose hair-springs may be disordered by much hand-clapping. Anyway, a comedian who gets the heartiest laughter while on the stage goes off without the usual applause. The old curtainraisers have mostly been dropped.”

Marie Le Varre, here with “Wiklflower,” has joined Frank Neil’s company and is playing in “Not To-night, Dearie.” “The Blue Mazurka” has ended its London season and is to be replaced by “Peggy Ann,” described as a satirical musical play. The Baroness Furnival, who spent some time in Auckland, is to make her debut on the London stage. She lias already dallied in one or two films. A London correspondent writes of the Australians, who are playing in the Empire Metropolis: “Gladys Moncrieff, who made a hit in “The Blue Mazurka”; Clarice Hardwicke, who is playing a leading part in the new play at Drury Lane, “Desert Song,” after having played right through the season of “Rose Marie” (Miss Hardwicke, by the way, was married recently to an Englishman) ; Robert Geddes, who also played in “Rose Marie,” and is now touring the provinces with this play; Madge Elliot, Josie Melville, Cyril Richards, and John Kirby, all of whom are playing in “Lady Luck,” the play which has just been put on at the new Carlton Theatre; Fred Collier and Hubert Ennor, who are playing in “The Vagabond King.” Marie Ney, who made a name by her clever acting in ‘The Constant Nymph”; Lorna ££elms, who is touring in “Give and Take,” with Harry Green, who recently played in New Zealand; Wilma Berkly, who, as understudy to Josie Collins in “The Greek Slave,” took the latter’s place when she fell ill, and played it with tremendous success for a long period; Aunona Wynne, who played second part in the same play; and Vera Pearce, who has established herself as a recognised favourite with the London theatre-going public ever since she made her first important debut in “No, No, Nanette.” It would certainly appear by the foregoing that the invasion of London by Australian theatrical stars is almost complete. Here is St. John Ervin’s criticism of the elaborate London revue, “White Birds”:—This revue began at 8.30 half-an-hour after the advertised time of starting—and it ended at 20 minutes past twelve. Three of the items in the programme were omitted, presumably in order that it might do so, although I thought that the revue really stopped because all concerned in it were too tired to go on. The audience certainly was. I pitied the chorus, who did their job well, and must have worked themselves nearly silly during the protracted rehearsals. Maurice Chevalier and Ed. Lowry gave good performances. So did Gilbert Wells and Florence Brady, who were shabbily treated by an overwrought gallery. Anton Dolin danced well, and Gwen Farrar made familiar noises. Some of the settings were excellent, especially a scene in Montmartre and a figure of an Indian brave, but the greater part of the revue was incurably fatuous. I found the portrait of a E. Everard Gates in the programme, but I could not discover what part he took in the entertainment. He certainly did not do anything funny. A gentleman in the audience informed me that the revue was reported, up to that moment, to have cost £27,000. I told him that I thought it was very dear.

The stage in America to-clay is very largely “topical.” American plays are made to appeal to Americans, and this may explain the failure of so many of them in England. The Berlin stage at present is said to be very largely international, and a home for new ideas. Shaw and Shakespeare, Pirandello, and Somerset Maugham are there in profusion, but in America these are very largely neglected. The American playwright, excluding, of course, a man of the type of Eugene O’Neill, snatches a theme from a newspaper headline and throws it on to the stage. In “Spread Eagle.” a play produced in America recently, a picture is drawn with savage frankness of how a war with Mexico might be precipitated for private reasons—and this at the time when there were very serious ruptures between the two countries. The play was “journalistic,” but it moved logically and inevitably to an artistically true conclusion. “One of the most encouraging things about such a play,” says Mr. Arthur Ruhl, the American critic, “is its lack of finish—its proof that the theatre is not a thing to be afraid of, to be monopolised by socalled wizards and esoteric insiders, but that it can be approached and used successfully by novices when they have something to say.”

Jean Forbes Robertson, here with her mother, Gertrude Elliott, is playing in “The Combined Maze,” a London piece. She is hailed as one of the coming stars. C. B. Cochran’s latest revue in London is “One Damn Thing After Another.” Stalls sold at 31s 6d, plus entertainment tax, for the first night. Yvonne Banyard, who is Lady Jane in “Rose Marie,” due in New Zealand in a few months’ time, was with one of the Pollard companies of children for some years. One of her parts at that time was Fifi in “The Belle of New York.” A variety of experience in plays with and without music has followed,- and there have been some appearances in vaudeville. Five minutes after obtaining a divorce at Livingston, Montana, America, from his second wife, Walter Hill, son of the late railway king, James J. Hill, married his third wife. The wedding was performed by a magistrate in a room adjoining the one in which the decree had just been proifounced. The bridegroom had been ordered to pay his second wife £5,000 cash, an additional £5,000 in five years, and £2OO a month for life. The divorce proceedings lasted 15 minutes; the marriage less than half that time. The third wife of the heir to the Hill millions is an actress who is known as one of the beauties of the Ziegfeld Follies.

“Sunny,” due for New Zealand shortly, in intention is one of the musical comedies which carry the audience away by speed. There is a romantic story, beginning in a circus, but one never knows when story may be illustrated or interrupted by an invasion of the ballet. Among ballets there is no respect for frontier boundaries; they dance into the story just when the please; and, in the mood, who can blame them? Sultans like to be danced to, and in the theatres on a light musical night almost everyone is prepared to be as happy as a sultan or a sultana. That is the essence of the entertainment. The sheiks of the Hull novels and of the pictures are tooserious children, compared with the care-free audiences of musical comedy. “Sunny” began in America, and the Australian production is based on the American model. In the London version the chief people are Binnie Hale, formerly in “No, No, Nanette,” and Jack Buchanan. Americans who have had a long season in Sydney, at the new Empire Theatre, will lead the Melbourne cast. Wyn Richmond takes the name part; Fred Heider provides comedy, and others from the United States are Beatrice Kay, Van Lowe, and the dancers, Marion and Martinez Randall. Queenie Ashton, from England, makes one of the principal contributions to the singing. The scenes are placed in a circus tent, on the deck and in the saloon of the s.s. Triumphant, and in Florida. Much of the dancing is provided by a “pony ballet.” Strangely enough no one ever tells of engaging a cart-horse ballet.

The popular entertainer, Alexander Watson, achieved a triumph at his opening recital at the Playhouse, Melbourne, when he commenced his fifth and final tour, under the direction of Mr. E. J. Gravestock. The main item was composed of selections from Sir J. M. Barrie’s famous story, “The Little Minister.” The “Argus” says:—“Sir James Barrie could . not wish for a more charming version of his story than that given by Mr. Watson in a condensed form. Whether he was portraying the little minister, the winsome gipsy, the dullard, or the simple villagers of Thrums, he was wholly convincing. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this number was the description of the Sabbath stroll in which several of the villagers discussed in broad Scottish accent on their way home the extraordinary behaviour of the little minister in suddenly changing the text of his sermon from Ezra 8 to Genesis iii., 6. From their difficulties in finding the book of Ezra in the Bible Mr. Watson extracted every particle of humour and kept the audience in almost constant laughter. Apart from the skill which he brought to his work, the account of the doings of the little minister and his associates was