AMUSEMENTS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 261, 25 March 1911, Page 7

AMUSEMENTS

HUGH .1. WARD SEASON'. Mr Hugh J. Ward's production of the farce-comedy ''Seven Days" at the Theatre Royal on Monday evening will be vested with additional interest, seeing that the season will comprise his farewell visit to Xew Plymouth as an actor. ''Seven Days" is the joint work Avery Hopwood. Mrs Rinehart is the author of a series of clever stories, including "The Circular Staircase," "The Man in the Lower Ten," and "When a Man Marries," while Avery Hopwood affords an example of the journalist turned playwright, and represents the modern school of American dramatists. " Seven Days," the first fruit of their collaboration, is said to have yielded each coauthor a fortune, since the farcecomedy ran for 402 nights in Xew York, and for six months in Chicago. The general idea of the piece is that a lot of people wJio are wishing each other 1001) miles apart, are kept together in one house for seven days, through a rigid quarantine. The characters include a divorced couple, a burglar, and a policeman, a pair of jealous lovers, a "medium" (who is credited with producing occult results that are really the work of the burglar), and a wealthy aunt, who believes that in the place of future punishment will be found divorced persons, whisky, and low-necked dresses. During Mr Ward's Sydney season, which only concluded four weeks ago, ''Seven Days" played out the last half, and the Sydney Press endorsed the American as regards the all-round attractiveness of the comedv.