NEW ZEALAND ACTRESS

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20728, 11 February 1939, Page 17 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND ACTRESS

AND THE LONDON STAGE MARIE NEY’S VIEWS That the responsibility for the dearth of good parts for our front-rank actors and actresses lies more with the audience than with managers is the opinion of Marie Neys, New Zealand actress prominent on the London stage. “The key to a good deal of the trouble is that most pernicious habit of dressing for the theatre.” she said in a talk about the recent discussion on the subject. “It keeps out of the stalls those intelligent and busy people who can’t spare the time to change, and brings into it the women who merely want to show off a new dress and the men who want somewhere to go after a good dinner. “It is analogous to the convention that insisted on Sunday-best clothes for churchgoing and so kept many would-be worshippers who could or would not conform to it away from church. Like this it is a convention of an earlier generation (I believe the Bancrofts started it when they put up their prices at the Prince of Wales’s and made it. a theatre for fashionable society', but it has no meaning for the present generation. I was so glad when .Tames Agate attacked the habit, for by keeping away the alert and busy intelligent people who appreciate and demand good acting in good parts it is going a long way towards stultifying the contemporary theatre. “But the real root of the trouble is our economic system which compels managers to present plays that will bring in money. The public demand for an artistically rich theatre is there: the material is there; it is the present system that keeps the theatre a profitmaking business instead of a servicegiving art that prevents the two from contact an-d mutual enrichment and sends flaming personalities like Donat and Laughton out to larger opportunities.

“As for theatre-money, what astonishes me is the ease with which £20.000 or £30,000 can he raised to back a new musical comedy, while if I wanted the comparatively modest sum of £IO,OOO for a season of good plays well acted I certainly couldn’t find a backer.” —(M.R. in the London Era).

Shows in Australia The “flesh and blood” theatre is increasingly active in Australia. Following the success of the nine weeks’ season of the Russian Ballet in Sydney, “The Women” is now drawing large audiences, and promises to b,g just as successful as it was in Melbourne, where it ran for well over 100 performances. It is said to be a very daring comedy, with an all-women cast. The London Casino Revue will open shortly in Sydney, with the imported cast headed by Sydney Melton Moore and Francois Bruille. Other wellknown people from abroad will be added during the season. In Melbourne the pantomime “Jack and the Beanstalk” has had a very successful season, and will be followed by a revival of the spe'ctacular musical play “The Waltz Dream,” last seen in 1917. Marie Bremner will have the role of the Princess. The “Hollywood Hotel” revue, an American production on the lines of the Marcus Show, is having a long season in Melbourne. Last Saturday one of the dramatic hits of the London season, “Idiot’s Delight,” a striking anti-war play, was staged in Melbourne, with Henry Mollison from London) and Lina Basquetfe 1 from America) in the leading roles. Frank Harvey, for long a popular leading man in Australia and New Zealand and lately conne-cted with Cinesound films, is prominent in the cast. The Russian Ballet, now in New Zealand, will play a return season in Melbourne before returning to London. Arnold Haskell, the well-known English writer on the ballet, did not come to New Zealand with the company, as he is busy collecting material in Australia for a new book.