PLAYWRIGHT AT 14

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 786, 5 October 1929, Page 28

PLAYWRIGHT AT 14

Ann Casson Has First Play Produced SYBIL THORNDIKE'S CLEVER DAUGHTER Ann Casson, the 14-year-old daughter of Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike, has made her debut as a dramatist at the Children's Theatre Endell Street. Mr. Casson told an interviewer that ; his daughter had written the piny while she was with her parents Vi their South African tour This is not the first play she has written, but it will be the first to be produced. She is superintending the rehearsals. ‘ The play is written to be acted by grown-ups, and is about grown-ups. It is a society comedy of the ‘ninties. Ann will not appear in it herself, as the cast will be made up of the members of the regular Children’s Theatre company.” Miss Casson’s play is called “The Camwells Are Coming.” When her father was asked what he, as a critic, really thought of his little girl’s play, he replied at once: “I think people will find it very amusing.” Mr. Geoffrey Wincott will, as usual, be the producer, and Miss Casson is, as playwright, helping him with the play. Although so young, Ann Casson has had a considerable experience of acting, and when she was seen in ''Mariners.” in which she appeared with her parents recently, many critics described her a child of enormous promise. The earlier play of this clever child, was filled with the characters who are mentioned, but do not appear, in Henry Arthur Jones’s "The Liars.” Colin Crane, the young Australian who, at short notice, took the part in Melbourne of an imported negro and successfully negotiated the big singing role in “Show Boat,” is a Sydney boy, says “The Bulletin.” The Taits drafted him from the Philharmonic Society into the august company of Harry Lauder, with whom he toured for a year. He has figured in several musical shows, including “The Desert Song.” The outstanding successes of 1925-29 29 season of the London Arts Theatre are “The Lady With the Lamp” by Reginald Berkeley, dealing with the life of Florence Nightingale; “The Infinite Shoeblack” by Norman Maeowan; “Diversion" by John Van Druten. Other lesser successes w'ere “Easter” (Strindberg), “Powers' of Darkness,” “Fruits of Enlightenment” and “The Clandestine Marriage.”