Muriel Starr Comes Back

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 212, 26 November 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Muriel Starr Comes Back

Success With Stock Drama in Australia Not more than a night’s journey from Melbourne there is a talented actress, who seems to have provided the exception to the present-day rule in the theatre that the “stock” company is as extinct as the red-nosed comedian. The place is Adelaide; the actress Muriel Starr. Stage pessimists (if, indeed, there be any) will be somewhat astonished to know that this week Miss Starr and her company gave their 100th performance at. the Prince of Wales* Theatre, Adelaide, says an Australian

In that time 16 productions have been given, and Miss Starr has played the leading part in every one of them. It is more than a year since she went into management herself, and her original intention was to play for a brief season in each capital city. The success which she achieved, however, induced her to obtain the rights of many new plays, and she also arranged to appear in revivals df plays in which she had become known throughout Australia under the J. C. Williamson, Ltd., management. Miss Starr's leading man is Mr. Harvey Adams, who is also the producer. There are sveral promising young Australians in the company, including Beth Mackey, daughter of Sir John Mackey, formerly Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Noel Boyd, and Desmond McMinn and Frank Leighton.

An actress who was passing a fishmonger’s shop looked at the serried rows of fish, which seemed to stare at her with their glassy eyes “Good heavens," she murmured hastily, “that reminds me, I’ve got a matinee to-day.” Strella Wilson, the leading soprano of the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Company (now at Auckland) is looking forward with pleasure to visits to the cold and hot lakes of New Zealand. Miss Wilson loves the beauties of Nature and is said to be an artist of considerable merit. Now that the company is to be retained in New Zealand for the production of “The Chocolate Soldier,” Miss Wilson may be able to see at least Lake Wakatipu and Mount Cook in the South Island and Mount Tongariro and Lake Rotorua in the North. New presentations in Vienna recently include “Broadway,” which was greeted with some suspicion by the critics when it opened. Another newcomer, known to every American hamlet as “Abie’s Irish Rose,” has opened at the Johann Straus Theatre under the title of “Lrei Hochzeiten” (“Three Weddings”). The management is looking forward optimistically toward a long run, but the critics, as at the time five years ago, when it opened in New York, were highly unfavourable. As usual, the Vienna musical comedies and operettas are thriving. A new Oscar Strauss operetta is also forthcoming—“Hochzeit in Hollywood” (“A dding in Hollywood’’). The pi ..action of “The Mikado" has been announced for late lin the year. Apparently this will be the first of a series of Gilbert and Sullivan pieces to be given in Vienna | —an experiment which will be worth watching.

Mr. Bert Itoyle, New Zealand representative of J. C. Williamson, Ltd., and J. and N. Tait, announces that the season of the specially organised comic opera company, now appearing with such success in the attractive Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, is to be extended and that this talented combination will now remain in the Dominion until after Christmas. Under the original arrangement the company, headed by Strella Wilson, James Hay. Charles Valenn, Winifred Williamson. John Ralston. Bernard Manning, Patti Russell, Leo Dainton, Lance Fairfax, with the augmented orchestra under Mr. Gustave Slapoffski, was to leave New Zealand for Australia on December 10. but so many requests hove been rna d<* that the company will remain and do “The Chocolate Soldier.”