“LITTLE ACCIDENT”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1052, 16 August 1930, Page 24

“LITTLE ACCIDENT”

Vulgar and Funny Says Sydney Critic j HUMOUR OF MATERNITY HOME The exquisite humour of' an inconvenient baby is the theme of the new farce at the Criterion Theatre, Sydney. I Some comedies are, in the old | phrase, “funny without being vulgar.” This one it would not be fair to call vulgar without being funny. It is both. Although our delicate minds are guarded against sex knowledge by the kind censor who looks over our films, we may still go to the stage for education in what every young mother ought to know (writes a Sydney critic). Now to the argument. Norman Overbeck, on the eve of his marriage to Madge Ferris, receives a letter containing grave tidings of what one of Mr. Kipling’s heroines walls “the almost inevitable results” of a midsummer madness last year. Being an honest, sentimental ass (most capably played by Gus Bluett), Norman feels he cannot desert the girl, who, be it remarked, has called him “provincial” because during their love affair he wished to make an honest man of himself by marriage. So, dashing away from his bride of tomorrow, he goes like a true knighterrant to the succour of his unofficial bride of yesterday. Naturally such a situation offers plenty of scope for the peculiar humour which clings about maternity homes. In such a farce the people are nothing—the laugh’s the thing. So all that may be said is that a large cast, headed by Edith Taliaferro, keeps the acting going. Mr. Bluett, as the unhappy hero: Miss Taliaferro, as the art .student, to whom a baby is only a little accident; Leslie Victor, with a good little character study of an Italian proud father; Ethel Morrison and J. B. Rowe, were the most prominent folk in this cast.

Susan Richmond, who toured New Zealand in “The farmer's Wife,” is playing in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” a play concerning Robert and Elizabeth Browning. It is one of the productions in the Malvern Festival, at which several of Bernard Shaw's plays will be revived. Kyrle Bellew, widow of Arthur Bourchier, is to marry Mr. John Beckett, the Socialist M.P. for Peckham. Arthur Bourchier, the actormanager, died in South Africa during a theatrical tour in 1927. Mr. Beckett formerly sat for Gateshead, and has represented Peckham since the last election. He was recently divorced j and Miss Bellew was cited in the case.