“Potiphar’s Wife

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 170, 8 October 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

“Potiphar’s Wife

A Play Which Has Shocked London

PUBLIC RUSH TO SEE PLAY WHICH CRITICS FLAY

” - I I “Potiphar’s Wife,” the play j founded on the old Biblical | theme, raised a storm of adI verse critimism in London for I its indecency. The following night 200 j people were turned away from | the theatre, which, was fully I booked for a week ahead. i J /CRITICS have described the play as: yj “Crude, repellent and vulgar.” “Lately plays have been called vulgar which seem to me to be quite innocent. ‘Potiphar’s Wife’ is much nearer the idea of vulgarity.” “The censor passed a very lurid temptation scene, to say nothing of Jeanne de Casalis’s pyjamas.” “Lady Aylesbrough, the modern equivalent of Potiphar’s wife . . . attires herself in a garment like a spider’s web, cuts the cord of her electric fan, and sends for the chauffeur to mend it. She offers him a cigarette; he refuses; a drink; he refuses; herself — he refuses and politely intimates that if, as she suggests, they are .to drop' the mistress and servant relation, he must inform her that she as a woman does not attract him.” “T thought up to last night that I was unshockable, but found that I wasn’t.” Asked by a newspaper man what he thought of the criticisms, the author, Edgar C. Middleton, said: “I am very much surprised. Madame Potiphar seems destined to create trouble throughout the ages. She is repeating her indiscretions of Biblical times in 1927, and I feel sorry now that I did not deal more firmly with her.” Pointing out that this is the first play that he has staged, Mr. Middleton added:

“I intended it as an antidote to a cycle of vicious plays. The paradox of the theatre is that if you treat a subject morally you are instantly attacked as being immoral. “If I had really wanted to write vicious plays I should have chosen the musical comedy stage, where drunkenness, seduction and other forms of vice are presented with musical accompaniment to rounds of applause from people who say they are shocked by such plays as mine. “The proof that they are shocked is that bookings are being made steadily for every night up to Saturday. "I have presented life as it is, and life is shocking. People pretend that they dislike realism. Yes, they dislike it up to the point of crowding to see it.” Jeanne de Casalis, who plays Lady Aylesbrough, and whose flimsy pyjamas have come in for a great deal of criticism, said: “The position is very trying for an actress, because she has no control over the play, the action, or the clothes. We have to say what we are told and wear what we are told to wear. I designed my apparel in the first instance, which consisted of the lace pyjamas which I wear now with sleeves and a lining of frilled gerogette, but the management considered that this was not sufficiently alluring, so the sleeves and the frills came off. I am not surprised that the critics have mentioned my dress, for it is a little scanty*. “When there is an objection to clothes worn on the stage the tempest rages round the innocent actress.” _

(By COTHURNUS J Diana Wilson, here with Lawrence Grossmith, is playing in “Up With the Lark,” in London. * * * Phyllis Neilson-Terry is playing in a revival of “Trilby” in London. Later she will leave for South Africa for a long tour. Afterwards she may be seen again in London in Shakespearean plays. Roy Russell, an English actor, is to have the leading male role in “Castles in the Air,” which will have its Australian premiere in Sydney at the conclusion of the “Tip Toes” season here. Mr. Russell has played a number of musical comedy roles in England, including the Prince in “Katja.” Recently in London, Seymour Hicks sued Captain Bruce Bairnsfather for £ 300 under an agreement whereby Bairnsfather. for the right of playing “Ole Bill” in Amer-

ica, was to pay Hicks 5 per cent, of the net profits, with a guaranteed minimum of £3OO. Bairnsfather’s defence was that as there were no profits nothing was payable. In giving Hicks a verdict for the £ 300, the judge

lield that the agree - Seymour Hicks ment provided—not for £3OO from profits—but as a minimum payment, whatever the fate of the play.

George Robey,, the celebrated comedian, has written to London from South Africa to say that in the opening four weeks of his season he played to

£II,OOO. He is due back in London in December and proposes to stage his "Bits and Pieces” entertainment in the West End. In Sydney, at the tii.3' “Playbox Theatre,” Duncan Macdougall has given opportunities of seeing some unusual plays. Among those he has produced are:—“The Hairy Ape” and “The Emperor Jones,” by Eugene O’Neill; “The Adding Machine,” by E. -L. Rice; “Massds and Man,” by Ernest Toller; “Morality,” by L. Thom a; “The Pushcart Vendor,” by Anatole France; “R.U.R.” and “The Insect Play,” by the brothers Capek; and “The Man, the Woman, the Will,” a Grand Guigmol farce. The present production is “The Awakening of Spring,” from the German of Wedekind.

In “The Cradle Snatchers,” coming to New Zealand in November under the J. C. Williamson management, Herbert Belmore, one of the principals of the company, appears in the character of a man “with a roving eye.” Bertha Belmore appears as one of the trio of "flighty” women who decide to play the joke on their husbands. Off the stage they are husband and Wife. In

Frederick Lonsdale has written a new comedy, “The High Road,” which was produced in London on September 7. The company included Fred Kerr, Mary Jerrold, Alfred Drayton, Gertrude Kingston, Colin Keith Johnston, Allan Aynesworth, Cecily Byrne, lan Hunter, Brian Gilmour and Marjorie Brooks.

The London Arts Theatre Club began its autumn season with the production of Marjorie Ling's “The Master," which was followed by Avery Hopwood’s adaptation of a play from the Hungarian, to be called “The Duchess of Alba"; Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under The Elms,” and Gilbert Wakefield’s English version of the French play, “La Prisonniere.”

After establishing a new record of 352 performances, Stiffy and Mo have entered upon their farewell week at Fuller’s Sydney Theatre. Jim Gerald is to fill the gap when they depart. However rough their humour, Stiffy and Mo deserve well as the couple who biffed vaudeville tradition and introduced low comedy of a definitely Australian brand; and there is a big public that will be sorry to see them