A Popular Play

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 22

A Popular Play

“Bunty Pulls the Strings ’

ST. ANDREW’S SOCIETY PRODUCTION

By special arrangement -with the author, Graham Moffat, the St. Andrew's Society of Auckland will present “Bunty Pulls the Strings,” which has

already enjoyed a triumphant career and achieved a remarkable spell of popularity.

Bunty is particularly sweet and wholesome. The characters are homelike and natural, and as the play is written of a period some 60 years ago, we have a picture of Scottish life which may be accepted as an accurate representation of the manners and customs of the folk of that time.

The central person of the play is Bunty. an attractive young woman, endowed with a more than ordinary amount of shrewd common sense, and with a capacity for arranging her own and other people’s affairs. Her father, being a widower, finds that with the approaching marriage of his daughter, ho receives an offer of marriage from Susie, amounting almost to an ultimatum. His former sweetheart (Helen) whom he left waiting at the kirk suddenly, after many years, appeal's, and is still waiting. Weelum, a quiet, hard-working joiner and newly-ap-pointed elder of the kirk, is Bunty’s intended, and as a guid Scotsman, makes her his banker. He is well under the thumb of Bunty, who also endeavours to direct her brother Bab in the straight road. In Rab we have one of the younger generation wanting to throw off the shackles of rigid discipline and parental control, and eager to go forth to participate in the attractions of city life. Bunty, with her forethought and powers of management, takes them all under her care. “Bunty Pulls the Strings” will be presented at the Concert Chamber on July 25.

“Who’s Who?”—the farce with which Oscar Asche attempted a comeback in the West End in London —was so frigidly received that it closed with the fourth performance. Other London disasters in recent years were “Tinker Tailor” (three nights) and “The Cave Man” (six nights). “Rookery Nook,” a comedy by Ben Travers, coming to Auckland on July 25-August 7, is highly diverting, and concerns a husband who has to shelter a fugitive girl in devastating pink pyjamas. This innocent young lady is the cause of hilarious complications, with particularly humorous dialogue that will be a change from the suggestiveness of some alleged comedies. Donalcla Warne, a sixteen-year-old girl, jumped into fame in Australia in one night, through her clever w r ork as Rhoda Marley, the girl who flees from her step-father’s anger into a series of compromising situations. Miss Warne "" into stardom from the chorus. | Miss Warne was in the ballet of “The j Girl Friend” in Sydney when George I Highland, who has “discovered” many |J. C. Williamson stars, saw her and wanted her for the chief role with jthe new English Comedy Company.