STAGELAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 340, 28 April 1928, Page 24

STAGELAND

(By

COTHURNUS)

FIXTURES

HIS MAJESTVS THEATRE May 2-May 15: *'A Cuckoo in the Nest/* “Rookery Nook.’* and “Thark." May 15: “Tilly in the City,” Auckland University students. May 23-June 12: “The Student Prince” and “Madame Pompadour." June: Dion Boucicault and Irene V’ aubrugh. COMING “The Girl Friend.” “Castles in the Air.** Grand Opera Company. ST. JAMES’S THEATRE June (Indefinite): “Sunny,” “Archie” and “Mercenary Mary” (Elsie Prince). Coming: Grand Opera Company. CONCERT CHAMBER Now Playing: “Lilies of the Field,” Auckland amateurs.

Reginald Dandy, here with “Rose Marie,” has gone into “Princess Charming” in Sydney. * * * Margaret Bannerman will open the new J. C. Williamson Theatre in Melbourne on April 2S with “Our Betters.”

Mr. John Fuller, who recently returned from a world tour, thinks that smoking should be permitted in theatres in Australia. He says that he will make the innovation in the dress circles of his firm’s theatres, with the non-smokers in the stalls, if the police regulations can be amended.

Winifred Wayne, of Napier, seems to be making a name for herself on the London stage, after gaining valuable experience in the provinces. Miss Wayne was engaged at the Regent Theatre, and has now been there for two years.

Claude Saunders, an Australian, wild appeared in New Zealand with Allan Wilkie’s Shakespearean Company, is appearing in “Excess Baggage,” in Los Angeles. He went abroad with the hope of getting into the movies.

Frediswyde Huntei'-Watts, leading lady of the Allan Wilkie Shakespearean Company, is playing in Sydney for the first time as Queen Katharine in “Henry VIII.” as Cleopatra in “Antony and Cleopatra,” and as Helena in “All’s Well that. Ends Well.”

“The Blood on the Bedpost” was the awe-lnspii’ing name of the comic- melodrama done at the theatrical garden party at “Eynesbury,” in Sydney recently. Lorna Helms was the villainess, Annie Croft was the heroine and support was given by Reg Wykeham. Reginald Sliarland, and Leo Franklyn, Harvey Adams produced the miniature masterpiece.

Guy Bates Post, whose appalling curtain speeches are still remembered in New Zealand, has flopped with “The Wreckers” in New York. Much the same thing happened with his London venture “The Climax.” Perhaps he will come back to New Zealand for sympathy.

Frederick Bentley Hard-boiled Herman —is returning to London at the close of “Rose Marie.” In New Zealand on the tour the “Rose Marie” company has just concluded, he bought a car and tried it out at Rotorua, he told a Sydney interviewer. “Rangi, the guide, had seen me play ‘Herman,’ and, because we were fellow Mummers, as ’twere,, she invited me and our party to her whare and staged a Maori, show for us. There was a first-class piano in the room, but none of the natives could play a note. We were asked to oblige with a tune. There were no chairs, so we stood up to play. I motored twenty-two thousand miles through New Zealand, and was never in a train for our between journeys.

Florence Smithson and Reginald Moore (the Australian tenor, known heer in the act of Stewart and Moore), appear to be well booked up in London and .its environs. The latter, in a recent letter to a friend in Sydney, stated that he was having an experience of a lifetime, playing alt the best houses in England.

An actress who had a pantomime engagement was viewing diggings near the theatre. She was delighted to be offered a bed-sitting room containing a piano. “Oh,” she said to the landlady, “how much is this room, inclusive of the use of the piano?” The good lady replied, “Wouldjer mind playing something first afore I decides?”

"England is suffering from a bad attack of dogs,” says Mr. John Fuller, of the theatrical firm of B. and J. Fuller, on his return from a world tonr. Tin hare racing, he said, was immensely popular, but even more “doggy” were the women. Fashionable women had a. change of dog to match various dresses, and their dogs were permitted to run in the dining and bedrooms of their private houses and in hotels. In some of the big stores, a special dog's dinner was served, at a charge of Is 6d.

The announcement that Mr. George Black, M.L.C., first N.S.W. film censor, and ex-Chief Secretary, will shortly marry Priscilla Verne, a former vaudeville star, is the . latest romance in Sydney. Mr. Black was born in Edinburgh in 1854, and thus is 74 years of age. The prospective bridegroom is one of the best known politicians in the State. Thirtyseven years ago he entered the State Parliament as Labour member for West Sydney. There is probably not a ' better-known former vaudeville figure in Australia than Miss Verne. Of Australian birth, she first came into prominence with the company headed by Charles Hugo. Later, she went to America, where she was highly successful in vaudeville—in song and comedy sketches —and achieved stardom in a big pantomime production, “The Land of Nod.” She returned to Australia about 15 years ago, "