“ON APPROVAL” POPULAR

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 567, 21 January 1929, Page 15

“ON APPROVAL” POPULAR

REVIVAL OF “NELL 0’ NEW ORLEANS” VANBRUGH-BOUCICAULT SEASON Auckland showed its approval of “On Approval,” the Miss Irene Vanbrugh and Dion Boucicault presentation at His Majesty’s Theatre on - Saturday evening at the final staging. Miss Rowena Ronald and J. B. Rowe gave full support to the principals. This evening Lawrence Lyre’s comedy of “moonshine, madness and makebelieve, “Miss Nell o’ New Orleans,” will bo presented. When played by the company in Auckland -five years ago it proved to be a popular offering. The revival is sure to be welcomed. The frank description of the comedy as one of moonshine, madness and make-believe puts the audience in the desired humour for the strange happenings in the old-fashioned garden of a New Orleans home. Bright flowers and black servants assist in creating the background. Two romances are interwoven, one old and one new. How the old one lives again and the fracture in the new one is healed is well told. Nelly Daventry (Miss Nell) provides Irene Vanbrugh with one of those parts in which she seems to revel. No longer young, she returns to New Orleans when she learns that her young niece is in love with the son of the man to whom she (Nell) was engaged. The boy’s father, a widower, objects to the marriage, but Nell is more than equal to the occasion. One of her moves is to put the clock back 20 years and appear as she was on her engagement night. In this escapade and the others which it involves, Miss Vanbrugh is at her best, and presents a captivating picture. Dion Boucicault gives an excellent character study of Pere Clement, a little French priest with broken English and a fussy, excitable temperament. This kindly old chatterbox endears himself to the audience, and shares with Miss Vanbrugh the honours of the play. The cast includes Rowena Ronald, Beatrice Fischer, Pressy Preston, Eileen Morris, ,T. B. Rowe, Ronald Ward and Reginald Wykeham. The box plans are open at Lewis Eady’s for “Miss Nell o’ New Orleans,” and “Mr. Pirn Passes By.”