“YOUNG WOODLEY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 678, 1 June 1929, Page 15

“YOUNG WOODLEY”

HIS MAJESTY’S, JUNE 11 “One, of the most remarkable plays ever written,” is how a critic of a leading London paper described “Young Woodley,” the drama of college life which will be staged at His Majesty’s Theatre for a short season, commencing on Tuesday, June 11. The plot is unusual, that is generally admitted, and the theme is elaborated in the most skilful and artistic manner. It tells the tale of the love of a college youth (a much misunderstood boy, whose outlook on life has been somewhat warped by circumstances over which he had no control), for the young wife to the schoolmaster. They are found in what appears to the jealous and somewhat repellant master to be circumstances demanding immediate explanation. That explanation comes from the wife, who clears herself at the expense of the youth. His goddess immediately falls from the high pedestal on which his vivid imagination fired by an adolescent admiration, had placed her, and the earth comes tumbling about his ears. He is eventually expelled from the college for another indiscretion, but before he leaves he learns that the life of today is not .really so sordid as he believes, and, chastened and more manly from his unpleasant experiences he goes forth to fulfil his true place in the world. “Young Woodley” will be played by a new English comedy company, and a novelty that is expected to appeal to theatregoers will be the appearance of three schoolboys real schoolboys they are. The day of youth has come with a vengeance in this play. But the grown-ups will like the innovation if the London and Sydney critics know anything of the psychology of the amusement-lover. Lewis Shaw, who will play Woodley, George Preston, Michael MacOwan (all three enact parts from 17 to 19), Frank Royde, who will play the schoolmaster. and Natalie Moya, who will play the schoolmaster’s pretty wife, nave all scored immediate successes in Australia. The box plans open on Friday next at Lewis Eady, Ltd. Lilian Rich, who so much resembles Betty Balfour, though a little taller, and has been mistaken for her on more than one occasion, is an English girl born in Dulwich. She commenced her theatrical career at the Lyceum Theatre, London, when she played in “Babes in the Wood” when a child. British film producers failed to appreciate her talent, so without experience and without even a letter of introduction, she tried her luck in Hollywood, and now. after playing leading parts in about 30 big American films, she has returned back Home to “do her bit” in British pictures. Her first one will be “High Seas.”