STAGELAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 146, 10 September 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

STAGELAND

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE | September 17: “La Mascotte,” Auckland Amateur Operatic Society. October 28: “The Ghost Train.” October (indef): “Rose Marie.” December (indef): “Sunny.” CONCERT CHAMBER September 15, 16 and 17: Little Theatre Society (three one-act plays). TOWN HALL Alexander Watson Recitals (indef.). COMING Alan Wilkie in “Shakespeare.” “Tell Me More.” “Cradle Snatchers.” “Tip Toes.”

“Rose MJarie” looks as though she may make her debut here in November. The Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, with “Ruddigore,” may be the Christmas attraction in Auckland. Frank Cochrane, who toured Australia and New Zealand, as the cobbler in “Chu Chin Chow,” has produced the fantastic opera of “The Ladder,” at Daly’s Theatre, London. Four of the J.C.W. companies will* be touring New Zealand toward the end of the year—“ Rose Marie,” “The Ringer,” “Cradle Snatchers” and the Gilbert and Sullivan opera company. * * * Rehearsals have gone splendidly for the forthcoming production of the Auckland Little Theatre Society and the season promises to be extraordinarily good. Three splendid one-act plays have been chosen, “Rehearsal,”

by Christopher Morley, “The Old Lady Shows Her Medals,” 'by Sir James Barrie, am} “Pan in Pimlico,” by Helen Simpson. Mapy new players will be seen this season, and several who have already established their reputation with the Little Theatre Society. * * * Steps are being taken by the Variety Artists’ Federation to prevent the appearance in England of companies of coloured theatrical or variety performers. Albert Voyce, chairman of the federation, said recently: “We do not object to single turns of merit, but we do object to whole companies of coloured artists flocking in and keeping British artists out of employment. We have therefore decided to ask the Ministry of Labour not to issue permits of entry to companies of coloured artists.” All those who remember Harrie Ireland, who reigned as a stage favourite in Australia when drama was the popular theatre attraction, will regret to hear of her critical illness. For the last three weeks she has been a patient at Lister private hospital, Queen’s Road. Melbourne. She is a daughter of George Richard Ireland, a clever actor who took part in the making of the early theatrical history of Australia. His daughter Harrie, with her tall, slender figure and beautiful auburn hair, was an ideal type for a stage adventuress, and these were the parts that invariably came her way. She was associated in many spectacular productions when Bland Holt used to stage Drury Lane dramas at the Theatre Royal. These are the plays by which she is best remembered. but people who have taken a keen interest in the theatre for many years do not forget Harrie Ireland’s fine work during the Kyrle Bellew and Mrs. Brown Potter season, and later with the .Williamson management, when Julius Knight was sending the box-office receipts soaring.

New Zealand dancers are getting a footing in London. Joan Beere, of Wellington, who, with a partner, appears as Desire and Dore, have been dancing at the clubs. Two others are Zelda Bailey and John Juan, who have been playing at the Coliseum and the Alhambra.

(By COTHURNVS) .Betty Ross Clarke, who is the leading lady of that delightful comedydrama, "The Ghost Train,” is just as pretty and as charming on the stage as she is on the screen. In her many starring vehicles for the screen, she has won the admiration of picture fans throughout the world. She has played oposite many film stars whose names are a household word in this country. Her part in "The Ghost Train” calls for dramatic ability of no mean order, and Miss Clarke fills the role to perfection. * * 9 Louise Lovely is to return to the stage in the big comedy role of “The Last Warning,” “a piece of thrills and laughs,” which will open at the Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne, some time next month. Most of the players in ‘■‘Outward Bound” will be in the new company, which is being formed by White and Kdgley, Frank Bradley will be producer. In "The Last Warning,” Miss Lovely will have the roh which was played Sloane, now leadii Snatchers.”

Mascotte Ralston was married recently to Mr. Philip Harris, of Nashville. Tennessee, IJ.S.A., and intends to try her luck in pictures at Los Angeles after she has spent a visit with her husband’s people. “Father says I am giving up my career, but I tell him it is just beginning,” she said. Her honeymoon will be spent in Sydney and Melbourne, and she will leave for America with her husband in October. Miss Ralston is a daughter of Jack Ralston, and, like her father, has appeared several times in New Zealand.

The Renee Kelly Company, less Renee, is strewn over Sydney, at present. Antony Holies and his wife, Dorothy Fane, returned to London when the company was in Perth. The disintegration has been gradual. George Barraud left unspectacularly for the States some months ago, and his immediate successor as Renee Kelly’s lead, Alexa.ndre Onslow, floated off from Adelaide without farewell streamers from his vessel. Pirie Bush replaced him as Dillingham in “Mrs. Cheyney.”

“Peggy Ann,” produced at Southsea before going to London, is almost startlingly, utterly different from any musical play ever seen. “Peggy Ann” is really Cinderella. She has one handsome and one ugly sister and she works in a boardinghouse. Disappointed and tired of making jam for a shrill-voiced mother she goes to sleep and dreams. From this point everything that happens is in the nature of a satire. The play becomes a phantasy, frequently beautiful in setting and dressing, often whimsical in the extreme. Peggy Ann dreams of a grotesque Piccadilly Circus, of wonderful Regent Street shops, of a brilliantly upside-down wedding, of a yacht, of the open sea, of Havana, and then she wakes up only to find herself still in the dreary old boardinghouse. Dorothy Dickson plays the dreaming Cinderella. Maisie Gay, who floats through scene after scene of the dream in absurd garments, has a fine comic part which she is plainly going to squeeze to the last drop. She is admirably cast and very, funny.

It is remarkable that women writers have joined in the effort to drag down the standards of decency upon which the British stage hitherto has rested secure. There was recently produced at the Savoy Theatre, London, a play called “Wild Cat Hetty,” by Mrs. Kilpatrick, a writer who has done good work in the past. The play is said to be entirely unworthy of her. It is the story of a scientist who believes that environment, and not heredity, is a potent factor in the development of human beings. His friend, Professor Raikes, however, ascribes that power to heredity. Stephen agrees to “experiment” with a young woman from the gutter—grand-daughter of a murderer, daughter of a drunken father and an immoral mother, foul-mouthed, untamed, unwashed. After several months of Stephen and his kindly aunt, Hetty, “dressed as a lady,” is a strange mixture of culture and ignorance. She figures in an unsavoury scene in which she offers herself to her patron, who learns that she has only made a fool of him. One is tempted to ask if Nature had not done that already. The play seems to be entirely devoid of decent purpose, and, as one London critic said, it is difficult to understand why there are authors who will write such rubbish, actors and actresses willing to play in it, and audiences foolish enough to sit through it. In this instance the company included such players Dorothy Minto and Mary Jerrold, J. H. Roberts and Paul Cavanagh.

Hugh Steyne is another Australian who intends to go abroad. He will sail for England on September 10. This clever Australian has done some capital caricatures of ridiculous old men. At present Mr. Steyne is in hospital, convalescing after an operation. He had appeared many times in New Zealand,

Miss Bannerman has achieved success in a Ion?? series of dramas and comedies in London, including “Decameron Nights,” “The Naughty Wife” (played in New Zealand by Renee Kelb), an “Three Wise Fools.” “It is difficult —it is not possible—to estimate where Miss Bannerman will eventually find herself on the stage,” wrote William Pollock in the “London Daily Mail” recently. “Her rise during the past three years or so has been extra.ordinary, and it is now quite clear that she is only at the beginning of a brilliant future. She is one of our greatest hopes among young dramatic actresses.” Miss Bannerman—“Bunny” Bannerman to those who know her well enough, and to that host of faithful fervent gallery girls who always acclaim her on first nights—was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1896. Her family name is Le Grand. The first part she played on the London stage was in a musical piece called “Tina,” at the Adelphi Theatre in 1915. In less than three years she was a vastly popular revue star. Her singing and her dancing were not, perhaps, greater than her per-

sonal charm; her voice was rather small, and her steps were rather ordinary ones, but men back from the war were particularly pleased with her fairhaired freshness, her dainty ways, her touch of wistfulness. In those days she was the kind of girl you found looking at you from magazine covers. Now she is the sort of young woman you read about in the latest novels. In “Our Betters” satirical Somerset Maugham provided the part of a young woman of a certain immoral section of society which Miss Bannerman is said to have caught wonderfully. Wonderfully is the right word; it was never intended that so young an actress should attempt the character, but she got the chance to do so and her performance astonished the critical theatrical world. People went about saying quite frankly, “I didn’t think Margaret Bannerman could do it”; critics from abroad asked, “Who is this actress? We have never heard of her.” “One of the secrets is that she is willing and able to learn. But she is not only teachable; she has innate understanding. It may be instinct, it may be keen observation. Most likely it is a combination. That what she did in “Our Betters” was not a fluke has been demonstrated by what she has done since. Playing a different of woman she has won just as much, if not more, approval from connoisseurs of fine acting. She has grip, personality, ease, and—noteworthy in these days of vocal affectations on the part of so many young people of the theatre —an uncommonly right way of speaking English.