AN ACTOR WHO WRITES LIBRETTO

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 182, 22 October 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

AN ACTOR WHO WRITES LIBRETTO

PETER GAWTHORNE LIKES COMPANY SUCCESS BOTH WAYS When Peter Gawthorne sits down on the corner of the piano or on the window sill to write a libretto he doesn’t first lock the door and tie a wet towel round his head, says an interviewer in the “Sydney Sun.” Not he! Listen, “I love people. I love the world. I’m not easily distracted, and get lonely If there arn’t people around. They can raise hell’s delight when I’m working, and I won’t notice.” There’s an amiable playwright for you! He doesn’t write the music of his musical comedies, but “he thinks in music,” and writes lyrics to little tunes of his own. Then he hands them on to his friend, Harold Garsting, and between them they make musical comedies. “Nat Nobody,” a one-act trifle, was the first produced in the Coliseum bill, with Townsend Whitling, who we saw in “The Farmer’s Wife,” in it, and Peter Gawthorne in the name part. In 1922 “The Island King” was produced by Lyall Swete, with the author of It as the yillian of the piece. And last, “The Wishing Well” was done by the Tom Watts and Leslie Henson management, with Harriet Bennett as the leading lady. “Six of my cast are now on this side. Harriet Bennett, of ‘Roke Marie,’ Basil Radford, of ‘The Ghost Train,’ Geraldo and Enid Adair, the specialty dancers, Wylie Watson, on the Fullers’ circuit, and myself. I have another musical comedy almost ready. ‘Light of the Moon’ is it name, and the scenes are laid in Granada and on a British war boat, where a ball takes place, and in the garden of a British Residency.” With Renee Kelly this author-actor appeared at the London Savoy in “In the Snare.” He has also had long engagements at the Adelphi in “The Boy,” “High Jinks,” and others, and played the Gipsy in “Gipsy Love” for George Edwards. With Robert Lorraine he appeared in “Man and Superman,” and has a long stage career behind him. “I was only twelve hours off having my ticket as an air pilot when the war ended. Captain Hinchcliffe is a great pal of mine, and we frequently fly together, sometimes to Paris, and sometimes picking up photographs of big events for London newspapers. When the Australian cricketers were to play their first match at Manchester, we flew up for the pictures and came back with a fine view of umbrellas!” Peter Gawthorne is now playing the Examiner in “Outward Bound,” in Sydney.

John X). O’Hara, well remembered here in “Lightnin’,” is appearing in “The Ghost Train” in San Francisco. * * * Nellie Stewart is toying with the idea of playing “Romance’ during her Melbourne season, which is being arranged to take place soon, in consequence of the phenomenal success of the last one. * * m The well known Australian performer, Fred Keeley, sends the latest Scottish joke, heard in London: A member of that clan has offered a large prize for the first person who successlully swims the Atlantic; but—lie must swim it. under water. * * * Lorna Helms was playng in “Seventh Heaven in London when the mail left. An American actress had specially crossed from New York to play the lead, and Godfrey Tenrle was the principal. Lorna was well up among the stars. Laura Smithson, the militant spinetol*. ( ,\ vltb the P ai 'rot) in “The Ghost J rain, the mystery drama due in Auckland on October 29, was a pupil of Sir Frank Benson, the noted Shakespearean actor and producer. She took a prominent part in the old Bensonian matineo at the Lyric, London, when leading actors and actresses walked on. With her sister Ida, Miss Smithson founded the Dramatic Holiday Schools in connection with the Shakespeare festival at Stratford-on-Avon, in wTiich Sir Frank and many other notabilities have been keenly interested.

“Rain,” that tremendous play written from Somerset Maugham’s short story, is to be done in Sydney on October 22. Here is the cast: Sadie Thompson, queen of the vamps of the red light district in San Francisco; Margaret Lawrence; the missionary, marooned with his wife and party by the torrential tropical rain on an island, en route to Honolulu; Louis Bennison, The trader who keeps the inn where Sadie and the missionary and the others stay, is Wallis Clark- Tne doctor, Leslie Victor (unless “The Music Master” claims his services beforehand, the sailor lover of Sadie, Barrie Livesey. A very good part along severe lines is the missionary’s wife. Efforts are being made to secure Marion Marcus Clark for this. A feature of the play is the unceasing downpour which goes on behind the scenes throughout the whole action of the play. The idea is created that it gets on everybody’s nerves, and after a while excites their volcanic-passions, long suppressed. It ends in tragedy.

With Marie Burke in “The Whole Town’s Talking,” are Rose Le Varde, Thelma Burness, Beatrice Fischer, Bertha Ricardo, George Blunt and Leyland Hodgson. Emma Temple has joined the Joseph Cunningham Company in Australia, and is playing the charwoman in “Outward Bound,” which is enjoying a huge success. It was under the joint management of E. J. Carroll and Hugh D- Macintosh that Guy Bates Post was presented to Londoners in “The Climax.” The play ran for 20 nights, and then faded into the fog. “Seventh Heaven,” which was played in New Zealand, with Reme Carpen and Frank Harvey in the leads, has just been produced in London. Gerald Pring (here with Guy Bates Post) and Douglas Vigors (here with “The P’armer’s Wife”) are in the cast. Jenny Wynne and Arthur Ackerman, singers of old English folk songs in costume, have arrived in Sydney on a world’s tour. They not only want to sing, but they want every friendly grandfather and grandmother who has an old folk song up a capacious sleeve to produce it, lend it to them, and let them coffy it for their repertory. Arthur Ackerman says lie haunts old English taverns listening to “gaffers” singing the songs their mothers taught them, and committing them to memory.

Gladys Cooper, the famous London actress, is to go on her first provincial tour since she became a star. She will go out in February next with Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter,” and most probably a one-act piece, and will visit Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and other big towns. She is expected to be such a great attraction that in certain theatres she has been offered 70 per cent, of the box office receipts- Six.ty-ltve per cent, is generally looked upon as being the maximum for even a musical play with “London names” in the cast.

Twenty scenes will be presented in 90 minutes by the Crack-a-Jack Revue Company at the Bijou Theatre, Melbourne. This new organisation is headed by the clever Australian comedian, Joe Brennan, whose dame impersonations have delighted many audiences there and abroad, and Cyril Northcote, who styles himself the heavyweight comic. New artists in the new company arc G. W. Desmond, an English dancing comedian; Gus Dawson, an English light comedian; and Ira Vanda, singer and instrumentalist. Ida Newton, well known in pantomime and vaudeville, and Dell Barnes, are other p.eople who will figure prominently. Marie Burke is making her first appearance in comedy in “The Whole Town’s Talking,” which was staged at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, recently. She is supported by BarrettLennard, who was here in “Frasquita.”

Joseph Coyne, at the age of 60, continues his gambols in musical comedy in England. The veteran, having recently concluded a long run in ‘Queen Xligh,” shortly to be seen in Australia, at London Queen’s, is now appearing in the production of the latest Wodehouse-Gershwin frivolity called “Oh, Kay,” at His Majesty’s. Mr Coyne is, as usual, chief comedian. Years ago, at Daly’s, he was in the original production of “The Merry Widow.’ New Zealand had him a lew* years ago on a short tour in farce.

Patti Russell, who plays Mad Margaret in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera •Ruddigore,’” which is playing in Wellington, is a pupil of Madame Slapoffski, of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Madame’s husband, Gustave Slapoffski, has for many years been identified with the Savoy operasBetty Ross Clarke is making preparations to take out a company of her own in Australia as soon as she is through with “The Ghost Train" and back from New Zealand. The company will open in Perth on November 19 in “The Sentimental Bloke," with a Sydney girl, Phyllis Milligen, as Doreen. She has had considerable experience as an amateur, and has been for some time the star pupil of Miss McNichol. She is tall an:l dark, and has been, until “discovered" by Betty Ross Clarke and her husband (Mr. Collins, an agent for the Marconi enterprises), a typiste in the South British Insurance Company. “Meet the •Wife” will be the second play of Miss Clarke’s repertory, and two other successes are in the background when wanted. Beatrice Day may play the homely mother in “The Sentimental Bloke.” The many thousands of devotees of Gilbert and Sullivan opera will be delighted with the announcement of the production in New Zealand of “Ruddigo.re.” This is the first time the opera has been performed by a J. C. Williamson company. An interesting feature of the production is that, with the exception of three or four of the principals, every member of the company is either Australian or New Zealand-born, including James Hay, the tenor, who is producing the opera.

For the North Island tour of the “Ghost Train,” the successful comedydrama. Mr. John Farrell (Auckland) has taken over the management from Mr. Alex Wilson (Wellington). Mr. Walter Monk is touring manager. Mr. Wilson remaining in Wellington to manage the Gilbert and Sullivan Company. Marie Lohr, the actress, who is a native of Sydney, where she began her stage career, is petitioning for a divorce from Anthony Leyland Val Prinsep. The suit is undefended. Since 191 S Marie Lohr, who has one daughter, has been manageress of the Globe Theatre, London. She has toured New Zealand. Dennis Barry, of the Allan Wilkie Shakespearean Company, began his stage career in a touring repertory company. He followed that by playing with Forbes-Robertson in “The Passing of the Third Floor Back.” At the end of 1920, he relinquished his engagement -with Lynn Harding, for whom he was playing in “The Speckled

Band” at the St. James’s Theatre, London, in order to jro to the British theatre in Cologne, run by the army of occupation. Here he had a most interesting and varied run of parts, modern and costume, dramatic and musical. It was not until alter his return to England that he * first played i n Shakespeare, his

first appearance being- the Duke and young Gobbo in “The Merchant of Venice.” However, he quickly advanced into the more romantic roles and played with conspicuous success in England the range of parts he will now play in Australia. For the Xmas season 1925-26, Mr. Barry made a popular success in a kind of part and play quite different from anything he had before attempted—Mr. Seymour Hicks’s part in the musical play “Bluebell in Fairyland.” After that, he was engaged by Sir Barry Jackson, of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, for his London production of “The Marvellous History of St. Bernard,” in which he played “The Fool.” Money values in the London theatre are extraordinary. On the first night of “The Climax,” at the Little Theatre, recently, Hugh D. Mclntosh, the Australian politician, boxing promoter, newspaper owner, theatrical magnate and present owner of Lord Kitchener’s old house, Broome Park, who presented this play, casually remarked, “Well, I’ve lost £2O tonight; I took out £I,OOO policies insuring the appearances this evening of both Dorothy Brunton and Guy Bates Post.” There are only four characters in “The Climax, and as Miss Brunton and Mr. Post have the leading parts it might have been disastrous had either (or both) met with an accident and not been able to open. # # George Grossmith writes in the “Daily Mail” on “Why We Produce American Plays”:—“There is a variety of reasons, good or bad, for the influx of American plays into London. Their chief reasons, especially in the case of musical plays, are the enormous expense of experimenting with a new play as compared with the cost of getting one already built up in New York, the vastly increased rents of big theatres, higher salaries, higher rates and taxes, and the (very proper) payment of chorus and lesser artists during rehearsals. Two other important reasons are the apparently unwaning dance craze and the popularity of moving picture stories. The effects of the dance craze on musical plays is overpowering. The successful numbers of a musical play must be written chiefly for their ‘dance value’.”

Unlike some of the other Somerset Maugham plays, “The Letter,” which is to be one of the Vanbrugh-Bouci-cault productions for Australia and New Zealand, depends on dramatic situations and on the personality of the leading women rather than on smart sayings. There is some plain worldly wisdom of this kind: Oh, you know what men are. They never care very much for the women their particular friends marry. When you’ve only one house I suppose you’ve got to live in it no matter what’s happened. We all think the cocktails we make ourselves better than anyone else’s, you know. A woman only makes a perfect fool of herself if she makes a scene every time a man pays her one or two compliments. She doesn’t need much experience Of the world to discover that it means rather less than nothing. “Of course she’s a very nice woman.” “She’s certainly a very pretty one.” Isn’t it strange how few people there are who can ever realise that you may be perfectly satisfied with* your own company I