Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 28, 23 December 1938, Page 10

Passing

Pageant

bu | Lat

Trevor

Lane

‘TRISTMAS cards this: week £2r0m plerity of inter- | esting peopleand a letter, too, that gives promise of some--thing rich and plummy in the dramatic line. It was from New. Zealand’s brilliant young playwright Merton . Hodge ... you may remember that I mentioned some weeks ago that if he could get a company of players together he’d tour New Zealand and Australia in a series of plays, mainly his own big London successes. Well, the company is now practically a reality, but there’s a catch. Merton can tell it in his own words.... °- we pve "QRGAN ISING a company here presents no great difficulties, but I must get the backing. I would never attempt a tour without several thousand pounds in the bank to keep the show going. In your article you said, ‘It was an idea of mine’... it is, but I must have support. ‘‘There’d be no difficulty about a company. Miss Violet Vanbrugh would go out to New Zealand and Australia under suitable auspices. (Her daughter, Prudence, as you probably know, lives in Sydney, and I have discussed the proposition with her. She thought it an excellent idea.)’’ : --- ------- |

THINK it would be a grand idea if this tour could be arranged. With Merton Hodge directing the plays and the company, Violet Vanbrugh, distinguished member of a family well loved in this part of the world, and possibly Godfrey Tearle in the leading parts, supported by several lesser but first-rate English artists, the season could be a thorough suecess. Merton has several excellent plays of his own to make up a good repertory season. His first outstanding success, ‘‘The Wind and the Rain," presented here a year or two ago by a none-too-brilliant company, would take on fresh lustre if performed by West End stars; then there is ‘‘Grief Goes Over,’’ received unenthusiastically in London but -rapturously in New _ York, where Sybil Thorndike played the lead, ‘‘Men in White,’’ the outstanding hospital play that has also been filmed in Holly-

wood, and ‘‘The Island,’’ a splendid play that ran in London for the greater part of this year. * [7 would be nothing short of scandalous if lack of funds and organisation should prevent these stars from making the trip from London. IF ONLY WE HAD A NATIONAL PHRATRE MOVEMENT IN NEW ZEALAND! Yes, I know ... you’re going to point out that rt has taken donkey’s years for London to aéquire « National Theatre (and they’re still wrangling about it). But I don’t quite mean a movement like that. London has a hundred. and one legitimate theatres, concert halls and the artists to

fill them. It has the Old Vic for Shakespeare and Sadler’s Wells for opera and. ballet. There’s Covent Garden and the Queen’s Hall and plenty of cinemas, where the pick of continental filns its shown every night. So I rather agree with the people who oppose the building of a big and expensive national theatre on the inconvenient and noisy site in Kensington. But the theatre’s half-bwilt, so it’s too late to lament. Buz in New Zealand here the case is quite different. I think there are quite a. few people who occasionally tire of endless revues, who would often prefer something a ‘little more elevating at the cinema than a Joan Crawford drama or a Laurel and Hardy comedy.

A New Zealand national theatre as I see it would encourage and sponsor the appearances of important American and European stars and plays, persuade famous people to erabark on lecture tours of this country, bring out such outstanding foreign films as ‘‘Un Carnet de Bal’’ and ‘‘Mayerling." ~ * §° you see I’m not suggesting the putting up of a grand building the size of the Wellington Railway Station and the appointment of all sorts of © people with big salaries and important-sounding titles. There are plenty of theatres and halls in every town now. What we we want is some organisation that can contact overseas people, arrange tours and look after the financial end of things. And if Australia were to have a similar movement the business of luring ‘‘big names’’ out to the Antipodes would he infinitely simpler. *

AMERICA is erazy about. lecture tours and all over the country are little local organisations that sell the tickets, book the hall and handle the publicity before the lecturer arrives. You saw the statements in the papers last week made by Anthony Eden in New York. Well, he’s on a lecture tour of the United. States right now-and assured of a colossal season. New Zealand’s Hector Bolitho toured America this year; so did Beverley Nichols, Lady Asquith and Duff Cooper. pa PFERE'S an instance of what I mean in a letter I had this morning from Dan O’Connor, the entrepreneur who managed the tour of the Viennese Boys’ Choir a year or two ago and who is now to look after the new Vienna, Mozart Boys’ Choir. He writes: "For some years Henry Hayward and I have been trying to persuade H. 4. Wells to make a lecturing tour of these countries. Mr. Wells says that he finds it an effort to prepare a lecture nowadays, and is becoming increasingly nervous before audiences. Nevertheless he agrees to give a few lectures on his visit to Australia in January and I am hurrying across to Sydney to make arrangements. There is just a chance that I may after all persuade him to come to New Zealand,’’

"THERE IS JUST A UHANCE."’ That’s what Dan O’Connor says... and it means that if Wells can’t be persuaded to come in January New Zealand will never see him for he is an old man now and not likely to go tripping across the world again. But if a national movement existed in New Zealand, H. G. Wells could be assured of a warm welcome here and Mr. O’Connor’s good work would be helped considerably. — * A ND that question of films, © too. The big film exchanges quite naturally must look after their Deanna Dur- | bins and Robert Taylors and Sonja Henies. But there is a limited (and quite payable) audience m New Zealand for French, German and Tialian films, PROVIDED THIS AUDIENCE IS ORGANISED, A woman with brains began a small theatre for foreign films

in London some years ago. To-day she has a chain of cinemas for continental films | and business is wonderful. * pF. MALCOLM SARGENT, ‘the world-famous conductor, came to Wellington in 1936, and gave three concerts. Then he sailed for Australia. But a national organisation would, or should have been able to persuade him to appear in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin. Both Sir Henry Wood and Sir Thomas Beecham have been toying with the idea of coming out here. A little gentle persuasion from a national theatre movement might be able to make up their minds for them. Ruth Draper came here of her own accord and took more money than the biggest musical comedy company. Tibbett was equally successful. * N the meantime Merton Hodge has launehed another play in london, this time an adaptation of Olive Schreiner’s famous novel, ‘‘Story of an Afriean arm.?? And, what is more, it is produced by one of the world’s most eminent people, Basil Dean, known in New’ Zealand principally for his work. on the sereen. . > Merton says in his letter t me: ‘In the meantime I’m busy doing ‘Story of an African

Farm’ with Basil Dean. I like it a lot and so does Basil, so I hope London will like it. We’ve got a grand cast... ."’ The cast is eertainly a "good one, Mary Clare, Curigwen Lewis, Aubrey Dexter, Alexis Franee ineluded. It’s rather early yet to know how London received it. The opening was only ‘a fortnight ago.

. CHRISTMAS card in grey and blue comes from Marie Ney, former New Zealander, who is now the tops in London’s theatre world. Marie is making a big success of her latest part in "She, Too, Was

Young,’’ where she plays opposite Edmund Gwenn. I remember that. in Marie Ney’s grey-walled dining-room in Knightsbridge she has only four pictures on the walls, four oils by an Australian artist . .. a warm bluemisty scene in the Blue Mountains, golden trees beside the Murrimbidgee, the sheerness of Bulli and a winding road on the way to Mount Lofty. Marie Ney loves Australia as much as she docs New Zealand.

QNE day when I was talking to her I told her about the growth of the repertory movement in this part of the world. She became immediately enthusiastic and interested. She wanted me to see cryptic, caustic St. John Ervine, of the Sunday ‘‘Observer,’’ so that he could write something about repertory, compare the. apathy. of the amateur theatrical movements in England with the vitality and go-aheadness of New Zealand and Australia.’ I meant to contact Ervine, too. (I had already met him in the television studios at Alexandra Palace), but somehow time slipped by and I didn’t.

A SUMMER sea on the South Coast of England is depicted on the card I have from Lord Alfred Douglas. ‘'Bosie’? Douglas, considered by himself and one or two others the finest writer of son-

nets in England to-day, is not happy unless he’s in a fight. If he’s not threatening the many inaccurate biographers of Oscar Wilde with libel actions, he’s writing stinging letters to ‘‘The Times’’ about T, §. Hliot’s verse (his pet aversion), or books suitable for the modern youngster, or the Government’s foreign policy. Tn his latest plateful of autobiography, ‘‘Ego 3,’’ James Agate says that he could like Douglas a lot if he saw.a very little of him. But that didn’t prevent the wily Agate from sending a book to Lord Alfred last Christmas with the touching inscription: ‘‘To Bosie Douglas . . . an olive branch from one dove to another."’ Douglas showed it to me with an amused smile. We LSO from London comes a card from Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliot. Madge has been through New Zealand this year on her way to Sydney to see her mother, but Cyril has been going eyes out since the beginning of 1938 with ‘‘Nine Sharp,’’ the really clever revue at the Tnttle Theatre in the Adelphi. This show, with Cyril and Hermione Baddeley carrying most of it on their shoulders, is one of the wittiest, best- dressed productions I have ever seén. Cyril Ritchard as _ the average asinine young man at the average London cocktail party has to be seen to be believed.

FROM New York comes a Christmas ecard from little (Elephant Boy) Sabu. Sabu went over to the big city for the premiere of his second film, ‘The Drum.’’ He was accompanied by .a fearsome Sikh bodyguard which New: York loved, — Sabu, as you know, was stable -boy to an elephant in India before he was discovered by one of the Kordas and shot to fame in ‘‘Blephant Boy.’? Now he speaks English well, plays bridge, is at school at posh Beaeonsfield, drives a car and is mad about ice-skating.

He ‘‘went all Garbo"? for a while, too, until the studio took him firmly in hand and squashed these displays of film star temperament. ~ * FROM the Houses of Parliament at Westminster comes a card from the Leader of the Opposition, smali Oxford-bred C. R. Attlee, high hope of the Labour Party in England. It’s nearly a year ago since I sat with Mr. Attlee in his lofty dignified room at Westminster, drinking tea, while he plied me with questions

about Labour’s regime in New Zealand. English Labour pins many of its hopes of ultimate victory on the present British Government’s dilatory defence policy. In hearty agreement is Mr. Attlee with the German air chief who said: ‘‘Germany’s air force brought her peace with victory at Munich; but our best allies were the people in charge of England’s A.R.P. arrangements,’"’ * usual dignified Christmas eard arrives from the BBC. (I notice the BBC has abandoned the now incongruous words it once attached to its seal: ‘‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation.’’) The British Broadeasting Corporation has a big year in front of it, biggest event of which will probably be the visit of their Majesties . to~ North America in May... that is, unless someone stirs up a war before then, in which ease the BBC will be very busy indeed! The BBC is sending a full squad of men with the latest equipment to Canada and the United States and the Canadian and American broadcasting services have promised their full support. | Climax of the tour is likely to be the joint message to the world by the King and President Roosevelt from Washington.