SYDNEY COMMENT ON CHANGE IN POLICY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 24

SYDNEY COMMENT ON CHANGE IN POLICY

On the startling changes in policy announced by Sir George Tallis, the Sydney “Sun” has the following editorial comment: Here in Australia we had a firm which for years had a monopoly of theatrical production In the big cities of the Commonwealth. Unhappily that firm, of late years at least, has had more eye to the box-office than to art. Those who can remember the Australian stage of 30 years ago, will remember that much of the work produced then is now regarded as in a distinct class, the class of “repertory,” not to be produced on the “commercial” stage, because the intelligence of the public prefers the mystery dramas of Mr. Edgar Wallace and the inanities of musical comedy. . . . There are still many thousands of people who know that a string quartet by Mozart is worth all the bellowings of Paul Whiteman’s band, that “Cymbeline” will outlast and outshine the mystery of plays of crookdom, that “Tristan” is eternal and full of spiritual elevation, hopelessly lost by the musical plays in which kitchen sentiment and the humour of the canteen are mixed in the same inevitable proportion. No wonder the public jceeks something new—even the glycerine tears of the film favourite, the crude emotions of the talkie, the glorified disc-records of the latest howl from Hollywood.