Daly Memories

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 288, 25 February 1928, Page 22

Daly Memories

Other Days in Famous London Theatre CHARM OF ADA REHAN The announcement that a musical play c,i is to be produced at Daly's Theatre, London , is an interesting reminder that a playhousej like a person , may “revenir d ses premiers amours.** This theatre was built in the early 'nineties to be a temple of comedy. It was named after its first proprietor, the American Augustin Daly, who,

among other oddities, used to insert passages of blank-verse fustian from his own pen into the plays of Shakespeare; and it owed its existence entirely to the genius of the Irishwoman, Ada Rehan, who was the greatest Eng-lish-speaking comedienne of the past half-century, says H. M. Walbrook in an English exchange. She it was who laid its foundationstone in October, 1891, in the presence of Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A., and other persons distinguished in literature and the arts; and when the stone had been declared “well and truly laid,” Mrs. Bancroft christened the coming theatre “Daly’s,” by breaking a bottle of champagne upon the foundationstone “with a force grievous to many dresses and hats.” The house took nearly two years to build, and was opened on June 27, 1893, with “The Taming of the Shrew,” and Ada Rehan as Katherine; and from that night down to the present day, it has, I suppose, been one of the most uniformly prosperous theatres in London. Ada Rehan’s “Viola” Managerially, it is chiefly associated with two names—those of Augustin Daly and George Edwardes. The former gave us Ada Rehan; the latter gave us Marie Tempest, George Graves, and the attractive music of Sidney Jones. There Ada Rehan not only revived her Katherine and her Rosalind, but revealed to us for the first time her Viola. Years before we had seen Ellen Terry’s at the Lyceum; and even with that exquisite memory in our possession, Ada Rehan’s was a joy to be revelled in again and again. Her beautiful presence, her lovely voice, her wistful melancholy, her dignity, and her humour made the whole thing enchanting. Everything in it was natural and noble, tender and exalted, and even at its most fanciful always womanly. If only I could convey something of the magic she infused into the lovely passages beginning “A blank, my lord.” in the scene with Orsino, and “Make me a willow cabin at your gate” in the scene with Olivia, and bring back the haunting picture of her! But it is impossible; just as it is impossible to describe the comic touches with which—never for a moment clowning, and always being simply a young gentlewoman in a panic—she drew peal upon peal of laughter from the audience during the girl’s duel with Sir Andrew. Jenny O’Jones At Daly’s, too. in those early ’nineties. we saw her as Maid Marian in Tennyson’s “The Foresters,” as Lady Teazle, as Julia in “The Hunchback,” & * - & a- % % as as a* *