STAGRLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 442, 25 August 1928, Page 24

STAGRLAND

(By COTHURNUS)

Judith Anderson, the Australian actress, who is without honour in her own country, is to play in O’Neil’s “Strange Interlude” in New York. Maurice Moseovitch “broke his head” in the trapdoor used in “The Silent House” one night recently in Sydney. It snapped on him unexpectedly. * * * Barry Livesey is being featured in a new musical comedy, “Blue Eyes,” in London, with Evelyn Laye as the star, and George Volalire (here with “Kid Boots”) as juvenile lead. * * * “The Student Prince,” with Beppy de Vries and James Liddy, will follow the grand opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney, next week, when the company returns from New Zealand. * * * Meta Pelham, played Mrs. Midget in a recent revival of “Outward Bound” in Melbourne. She is 7S, but her advanced age has not lessened her interest in the stage. Miss Pelham played with the company in Adelaide, and only recently appeared in “Dear Brutus” at the King’s, Melbourne. Her stage experience began in the days of crinolines. She was with the famous Brough Boucieault Company, and later in London played with many of the great people of the stage. Just before Miss Pelham returned to Australia to portray the grandmother in “Tilly of Bloomsbury,” she was with Lady Wyndham in “Our Mr. Hepplewhite.”

Free Play

Costing Producer Millions, But He Goes On Losing “THE LADDER” MAKES HISTORY A play called “The Ladder” continues to make history in the New York Theatre. Not very important history, it is true, but still history, write s Burn Mantel, the American critic. After having been given free for the last two years, after having cost its producer, Edgar B. Davis, by his own confession, 1,000,000 dollars, the play lias been rewritten and was again put upon a pay basis. Just 22 persons bought seats for this second hearing, putting 56 dollars in the box office till. Downstairs there were fewer than 50 patrons and they mostly reporters or friends of those having something to do with the play. The day the new production was tried Davis gave a luncheon at the Plaza Hotel for all those who have had anything to do with the play during the last two years, together with the attaches of the Cort Theatre, where it is now playing. Whatever “The Ladder” has done for others, it evidently is making a great humanitarian of Mr. Davis. His big heart bursts with a desire to be kind. The world is his country, as Tom Paine phrased it, and to do good his religion. I was standing in front of the Cort Theatre betwen the acts of the rewritten “Ladder” the night of the second blooming. One of the minor actresses, playing a bit and through the evening, came out of the stage door carrying a basket of flowers as tall as herself. Seeing such things, and being habitually suspicious in the Broadway manner, I immediately assumed that this young woman must be someone’s favourite child. I sought confirmation of the suspicion and discovered that each of the actresses in the comapny had received a similar basket of flowers. The stage was almost choked with them. They had come from Producer Davis, with his compliments and best wishes. In the end, Mr. Davis believes that it will prove a success. His faith is as boundless as it is seemingly ridiculous. How many millions he is willing to spend no one but Mr. Davis knows. And he, being a retiring type of philanthropist, refuses to say. Probably be does not himself know. He simply refuses to be beaten. Never has been, he says. Never will be. There is something about even so wasted a courage tbat inspires ' admiration. Perhaps it is the immensity of the sums involved, the prodigal and continued support of failure or the faith that follows lost causes.

I think it may be the perfect good taste expended upon the gesture as much as anything else. The refusal of Mr. Davis to take advantage of the publicity gained; its benign assumption of the role of a sort of Santa Claus toward his players. Whenever he thinks they may be worried or in doubt as to the future in relation to the play, he gives them a luncheon and assures them the play will go on and that they will be paid. Tbeir salaries are standard salaries, too. They draw them whether they work or not. At least, all during this last rehearsal period they were paid in full. Several of them are getting even more money from this angel producer than they ever drew from any other, and for far less important work.

Marie Ney, writing to a Sydney friend, stated she to play Kate in “She Stoops to Conquer,” with Sir Nigel Playfair, on August 14. “Outward Bound” has been revived again in Melbourne by Joseph Cunningham and Zillah Bateman, who played Lingley and Ann respectively. Mildred Cottell was Mrs. ClivedenBanks, and Eardley Turner the examiner. Gladys Moncrieif has rejoined the cast of “Rio Rita” in Sydney. She has had a cold that completely silenced her. Queenie Ashton carried on for ten nights without a trace of “under study” about her. Prances Dillon, coming with “The Laughing Optimist,” has a daughter, Barbara Dillon, on the stage. She is married to Val Guelgud, the author of “Black Gallantry.” His first play, “The Job,” is to be produced in London in the English autumn. He is a brother of John Guelgud, the well known actor. Barbara Dillon played lead in “The Transit of Venus,” and also Venice in “The Green Hat,” with T-Bulah Bankhead. She is just 21.

Six Best Plays Of The Year

A New York Critic Gives His Opinions O’NEILL LEADS THE LIST Six of the ten plays that I should select as the best of the season’s successes in New York are still playing, writes a New York critic at the end of the theatrical year. That is one of the tests of their worthiness. At least it is a test of their right to stand as the most representative of the playgoers’ taste in plays. And not one of these six, nor one of the other four, for that matter, is a salacious play or a sex play in the rougher sense. Not one of them is a silly play, or a purposeless play. Which would serve to encourage the theatre optimists as surely as it will discourage those who have been so patiently waiting for the theatre to lead the way to Hades. These ten plays I have chosen as being most worthily representative of the season are:— Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude.” George Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s “The Royal Family.” Philip Barry’s “Paris Bound.” Dubose and Dorothy Hayward’s “Forgy.” George Abbot and Ann Bridgers’s “Coquette.” George Manker Waters and Arthur Hopkin’s “Burlesque.” George Kelly’s “Behold the Bridegroom.” John Galsworthy’s “Escape.” Bartlett Cormack’s “The Racket.” Sean O’Casey’s “The Plough and the Stars.” The first six of these, in the order named, are still playing and seem likely, so long as the weather remains

cool, to continue on well into the summer. Some will hold over into the first weeks of the new season. “Strange Interlude,” so far as I can see, can play on Indefinitely with a rotating cast. With a seating capacity limited to 793, it has taken the O’Neill piece many months to get through the Theatre Guild subscription lists. Now the general public is crowding in. I stopped by last night and there were thirty or forty people standing in the back of the theatre, mostly women. I don’t suppose there ever has been a success in the theatre in any way comparable with this one of “Strange Interlude.” It is not a popular play at all, in any accepted sense of the term. A great many people frankly do not care for it; a great many others hoot at it as being a faky thing and stupid. There has been open opposition to its occasional boldness of speech and its moral tone. The strain of sitting through it for the better part of five hours and the inconvenience of a recess covering che dinner hour are both handicaps that could easily have killed any play.

And yet the demand for seats uas never once lessened since the play’s production last January. The Golden Theatre has been continuously sold out four and five weeks ahead. The dinner hour intermission, during which the 793 auditors rush out for food, has resulted in the establishment of -lew restaurants in the vicinity of the theatre and the increasing of che dining room staffs of those eating places previously established. The only complaint I ever heard from these performances of “Strange Interlude” upon which there is general agreement, is one concerned with ’he dinner hour. Fashionable or even unfashionable, theatre parties will s o out and try to crowd a course dinner into their tummies during that hour and a half allowed, and it can’t be done.

“Dick Whittington” will be the pantomime at the Playhouse, Melbourne, this year. Indications are that the company will be the strongest that has appeared in pantomime at that theatre. An early start is being made for the annual Christmas cheer. Managers and producers at the annual dinner of the Critics’ Circle (London) were invited to criticise the critics. Basil Dean remarked that in South America, not long ago, a critic was presented with a hook which on being opened exploded, and blew off the critic’s typewriter fingers. “That,” he added, “is one way of inducing in critics a reflective attitude of mind.” We are in danger qf losing Cecil Kellaway, but it’s all right now. Jacobs, Eddlestone and Mollison, managers of New York, offered him a firstrate contract, but he has signed up again with J. C. Williamson, Ltd. His brother, Alec, opened on Broadway a few weeks ago in “A Night in Venice,” a light opera, and has a three years’ contract with his new firm.

Rich in singing opportunities, “The Desert Song,” which will be produced in Melbourne, according to present arrangements, after the run of “Hit the Deck,” should be attractive, with Lance Fairfax as the hero. It was a “box office success” in Londongreater, perhaps, than “Rose Marie.” The music is by Sigmund Romberg, and the book and lyrics by Otta Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein and Frank Mandel. Three English players will make their first Australian appearance in “The Desert Song.” They are Virginia Perry, Maud Zimbla, and Harry Mundin, a comedian.

Miss Marie Seton, daughter ,of the late Lady Walpole and the late Major Henry Seton, has forsaken society to embark on a stage career. One of the Setons of Abercorn and a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots’ “four Marys,” she declares she is quite prepared to “rough it” if necessary. But for the death of her mother last February, Miss Seton would have been presented at Court this year. She has been training for the stage for five years, and last month she made her professional debut at the Rudolf Steiner Hall. * * * Stage traditions die hard (writes a Sydney “Bulletin” correspondent). Paper flowers are one of them. In the convent scene of “The Green Hat” Judith Anderson carried a sheaf of red roses that crackled and rustled most unflower-like. In “Diplomacy,” at the Melbourne Comedy, two bouquets of paper roses in the first act are duly admired—-and smelt! In a subsequent scene (in Paris) artificial flowers are mixed with good Australian gum. Even so with Oscar Asche, otherwise almost faultless. His Desdemona Champion brought in crepe paper gladioli, which later Oscar inhaled with rapture. Two I know who always used real blooms—Marie Tempest and Pauline Frederick.

“The Desert Song ”

Many New Players for Australian Production

In addition to Virginia Perry and Maud Zimbla, who recently arrived from England, several new artists will make their Australian dehut in “The Desert Song.”

This important musical production will have its Australian premiere at His Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, after “Hit the Deck” is withdrawn. Virginia Perry will play Margot Bonvalet, the leading feminine role. Herbert Mundin, a comedian from London, will be seen as Benjamin Kidd, society correspondent of the Paris “Daily Mail.” Maud Zimbla is cast for the picturesque role of Clementina, a Spanish lady, the role which she portrayed in England; Ronald Pomeroy as Lieutenant La Vergne, and Maud Pomeroy as Neri, will be other new artists with the company. Lance Fairfax, the New Zealander, will have the principal male role, Pierre Birabeau (The Red Shadow). Stephanie Deste, here with “Rose Marie,” will have a new dancing part. Lorna Helms will nave a congenial role as Susan, the part played in the London production by Clarice Hardwicke, Reginald Dandy will appear as Captain Paul Fontaine, Herbert Browne will be Sid El Kar, the Red Shadow’s lieutenant.