“TELL ME THE TRUTH”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1940, Page 7

“TELL ME THE TRUTH”

LITTLE THEATRE SOCIETY PRODUCTION. The action of Leslie Howard’s hilarious comedy. "Tell Me the Truth,” to be presented at the Opera House next Monday and Tuesday by the Little Theatre Society, takes place in the morning-room of the home of the Tweedies, in the Murray Hill district of New York. The district had. in Victorian times, been a wealthy residential locality, fitted with stately mansions, of which the Tweedie home was by no means the least considerable. Now. however, the district has been invaded by skyscrapers, and the Tweedie mansion, dwarfed by its surroundings. is described as "the last remnant of Victorian elegance." . The occupants of such a mansion are necessarily bulwarks of conservatism, and the Tweedies, though wealthy, stiff retain their early-Victorian ideas. The family consists of three middle-aged sisters —a childless widow and two spinsters and a young unmarried niece whose sheltered existence in such surroundings has made her the reverse of the sophisticated modern miss. The wants of the family are attended to by the butler, an old retainer cut on their own pattern, while their business affairs are conducted by a truly Dickensian solicitor. The Sabbath calm of this menage is rudely interrupted by the intrusion of modernity, in the shape of a scapegrace nephew and another youth who describes himself as a "deputy assistant mortician.” There is here ample material to provide comic situations, and the author has missed no opportunity for farcical and hilarious comedy. The cast that Mr Lawson has gathered together for this production is stated to show exceptional talent, and to miss no opportunity of "putting across” the humour of their respective parts. The parts of the two maiden sisters are taken by Mrs Robert Miller and Mrs H. H. Daniell, that of the widowed sister by Mrs A. L. Stubbings. and Miss Barbara Hair is the sweetly unsophisticated niece. The old butler is Mr Vivian Joseph., and the family solicitor is Mr J. Kent Johnson. Modernity is represented by Mr J. A. Kennedy as the scapegrace nephew, and Mr M. Armstrong as the other youthful intruder. The certainty of keen enjoyment, coupled with the desire to assist a patriotic object, will undoubtedly draw capacity houses to the Opera House on Monday and Tuesday next (July 1 and 2».