STAGE JOTTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 23, 27 January 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

STAGE JOTTINGS.

Bland Holt's Dramatic Company continue to do good business at the Opera House. Two fresh dramas were presented this week: "New Babylon" and "In London Town,"' the latter being performed for the first time in Australasia last night. Upon the close of the Auckland season the company will tour the West Coast, Working back to Wellington, where they play a return season.

Rowley's waxworks company appear for the last time next Monday evening. The season in Auckland has been a long one, and uniformly successful. The proprietor has decided to hold another beauty show on the closing night, and the lucky winner of the competition will be presented with a gold watch.

districts. The distinguished! entertainer opened the new and capacious hall at Rotorua to an overflowing audience on the 18th inst. The combination depart southward to New Plymouth to-day, and will play the most important centres en route to Wanganui.

The Broughs, having completed ti.i'ir Christchurch season, are now at Dvmedin, appearing in Henry Jones' comedy "The Liars." From *Dunedin they come north to Auckland, playing two or three towns en. route, and finally visit Wellington early in March.

The "Trip to Chinatown" Company is doing much better business in Wellington than in this city. The Wellington Opera. House has been filled to the doors almost every evening, and there is every indication of a most successful season. Wallace Brownlow's singing of "The Absent-Minded Beggar" nightly awakens much enthusiasm, which displays itself in a shower of coins upon the stage from all parts of the house, in response to to the baritone's melodious request to ' x ay, pay, pay!" The Company .will ca.tch the outward Frisco mail at Auckland upon the conclusion of the New Zealand tour.

Having been prevented by his English engagements from including New Zealand in his last antipodean tour, the Rev. Charles Clark will make a special farewell tour in this coony. Mi* R. S. Smythe has received a cablegram stating that the popular lecturer left England by the Oroya. On his arrival in Sydney Mr Clark will take the first steamer to Auckland, where he began his public lecturing career just a quarter of a century ago.

Dante, the conjurer, brother to the gifted original, has been attracting overflowing audiences the past month in the Thames, Rotorua, and Waikato

I hear that there is some chance of that charming actress, Miss Kate Rorke, accepting an Australian engagement. The'difficulty in the way appears to be that her roles and Mrs Brough's are identical, and that most of the plays in which she has made big- successes are already well known in Australia.

Mr J. C. Williamson intends to revive "Trilby" at the Sydney Royal during the present dramatic season. Miss Edith Crane will again be Trilby, while Mr Tyrone Power will play Svengali, Mr Reuben Fax's old part.

Mr Walter Bentley, Mr J. W. Sweeney, and Mr Driver are all appearing in "The Bells" at Sydney Criterion, the first-named taking his old part of Mathias with great success.

"Tess of the D'Urbervilles" replaced "The Only Way" at the Sydney Royal last Saturday night. This play, though new to Australia, has been produced in America with great success, running for a whole season in New York. It is adapted from Mr Thomas Hardy's well-known novel by the author and Lorimer Stoddard. Miss Edith Crane, who starred the colonies as "Trilby," and Mr Tyrone Power play the principal characters in the Sydney production, which has been exceedingly well received.

There is desperate competition amongst the London theatres as to which can hold the smartest benefit for the Widows and Orphans Fund. At present the record lies between Mr Charles Wyndham and Miss Ellaline Terriss. On the first night of his new theatre the former crammed £4000 into the house, and at an Albert Hall cafe concert on Friday Miss Terriss amazed a not very crowded audience by announcing similar results. Without plundering their guests (which is after all a dubious form of charity) Messrs John Hare and Wilson Barrett have also given successful performances in aid of 1 the fund, and at the music halls young, fair, and (in the way of change) exceedingly ab-sent-minded ladies with tambourines beg night after night. Reporters have learnt, now to run at the mere tinkle of the insidious tambourine. Women are neither respecters of the press nor poverty. They clean a poor "liner" trying to work up ten shillings worth of "copy" out of the show as remorselessly as they would a multi-millionaire. Still, there is no doubt a certain distinction in being robbed in the sacred cause of charity by a live Duchess. "I don't care." said poor little Binks of the "Owl," who let himself go at the Albert Hall. .and caught it hot ill consequence from Mrs B. "I don't care. 1 tell you I had to do it. Her Grace came up to me and says (how she knew my name I can't imagine), 'How-do-you-do, Mr Binks. You are the editor of the "Owl," aren't yon? Well you must help us all ways as your dear paper does.' " "But," said Binks. "But me no buts," retorted the merry duchess, and before he left the luckless reporter had been plucked conclusively.

This is not a bad story—shall I say of Charles 1. and Charles IL—the one a dramatic author, the other an imdramatic actor? Charles I. wrote to Charles IL, "What are your terms for a. matinee?" Now, the. second one wanted to be facetious, so he replied, "My terms are seventy guineas for •■ matinee." So Charles I. wrote back: "Dear Old Man,—l asked your terms for a single matinee performance. I did not ask the price of your services for the term of your natural life."

Writes our- London correspondent: Mr Wilson Barrett could not resist appearing as Hamlet on the stage on which Irving and Forbes Robertson had triumphed as the crochetty Dane, so on Saturday we had a matinee of Shakespeare's tragedy at the Lyceum. As a matter of fact the interest .lay more with Miss Maud Jeffries than Barrett (who has grown a bit boney for a boy Hamlet). Miss Jeffries, as you know, makes a sweetly tender and touching Ophelia, and on Saturday she played with exquisite understanding and tact. Mr Barrett's Prince of Denmark is far less comprehensible and interesting than Forbes Robertson's, but it was audacious in its early days at the Princesses twenty years ago, and even now must be received with respect.

Miss Lillah McCarthy has temporarily quitted Wilson Barrett and joined the company at the Princesses Theatre, where she plays in a melodrama which need be no further described when I tell you the title is "The Absent-minded Beggar."

The new Christmas extravaganza, "The Snow Man," at the Lyceum, is, we are told by an informative management, founded on MM. Chivot and Vanloo's three act opera "Le Bonhomme de Neige," which was produced at the Theatre dcs Bouffes Parisiens five or six years ago with much bright and tuneful music composed for the occasion by M. Antoine Banes. The story, for which the librettists were indebted to a novel by M. Laurencin, is of a purely fanciful kind, lending itself freely to scenic beauty* It is a sort of variation upon Mrs Shelley's "Frankenstein," though the vein is rather humorous and whimsical than weirdly impressive. In this instance it is an image of a man, made in snow, which is endowed with life by the young student, Franz, with the aid of a mysterious fairy, Ariella, and who persecutes his creator by his habit of following him about and his peculiar faculty of freezing all who come within his influence. Finally, Friscotin, the "snow man," is subdued by love, which is supposed to have the power of dissolving his perishablo frame, and Franz becomes free to marry Ariella. The scene is laid in Bruges, the burgomaster of that "quaint old Flemish city" and bin daughter, Edwifi-e, being* prominent characters. The Lyceum version, which has undergone considerable modification, notably in the introduction of brilliant ballets and the development of the fairy element, will be provided with additional music by Mr Walter Slaughter, and with some beautiful scenery by Mr . Hawes Craven mid Mr. Ranks. The principal rmrts will be rilnvcd by Miss Mario Elna. Mr Courtiee Pounds. Mr .T. Welch, Mr J. J. Dallas. Mr Alec. Murray and Miss Rosalie, Jacobi.

The dresses in the "Rose of Persia," at the Savoy, are out of the common, even for that abode of luxury. A

lady correspondent of an evening paper writes: "it is a very beautifui. scene upon which the curtain rises in 'The Rose of Persia.' Right in the centre is the grotesque little Hassan (Mr W. Passmore), dressed in robes* of russet brown bordered with green, and wound about the waist with yel-, low silk. Around him recline in graceful attitudes his twenty-five wives, clad in long silken robes of soft Eastern colouring, which are bordered with gold, and made with wide hanging sleeves, whilst at their waists and) about their necks are chains of glistening jewels. Their hair hangs loosely about their shoulders and on their heads are folds of silk arranged as turbans, from which long silken veil;; fall to the feet. Hassan's first wil'u (Miss Rosina Bradram) wears v very beautiful dress, the front being of royal blue covered with paillettes, which flash ovit .in different colours with every movement. The remaining draperies -ire of soft, shimmering blue silk, with jnsl a touch of darker velvet let. in here* and there. Acros." the forehead, too, it a narrow band of this velvet arranged beneath the folds of th« 1 urban, and chain upon chain of turquoises hang about her neck and 'aw clasped around her wrists. In strong* contrast to this i:: Miss Isabel .Jay's orange-coloured dress, trimmed with fringes of silk and bands of gold: whilst later on we are introduced to Miss Yaw as the Sultana, who wears yellow silk faintly striped with green, the front repeating the same yellow and green, which' gradually and imperceptibly change from one to the other. The lotu? sleeves are open from the shoulder to the elbow, where they are fastened with a clasp of turquoises, thence to hang in long draperies to the edge of the skirt. Later on in the act is another strikingly pretty scene, when Miss Emmie Owen dances, dressed in yellow relieved with slight touches of pale blue. All round are the "mendicants" in their picturesque rags of green or brown, the numerous wives in their lovely silks, Hassan in his* quaint brown costume, and beyond, through the open window, is the deep blue of the Eastern nijj-ht.

In the second act the arrangement of colour is equally fascinating, one particularly beautiful scene coming towards the end, when the Sultan sits on his raised dais dressed in robes of blue, and attended by his Ministers of State in gorgeous array. At hir. feet reclines the Sultana in draperies of silk of sunset hues; whilst beside her sit* her favourite slaves (Miss Jessie Rose, Miss Louie Pounds and Miss Emmie Owen) wearing the faintest pink, the most delicate shade of heliotrope, and the palest blue. Before them stands Hassan, telling tho story that is to save his life. Behind him are his five-nnd-twenty wives; and right away in the background are the soldiers, in tunics of emerald green worn over their chain armour, and their loose Eastern trousers of green silk.

Sir Henry Irving, who is meeting with continuous successes during- a tour through America, contributes a touching Christmas story to the "Temple Magazine." It runs; —A poor actor went to dine one Christmas Dayatthehouse of a comrade who w;u far from affluent, except in native kindliness. That invitation was a godsend to the guest, who had no other prospect of a satisfying meal, or even of a generous fireside. He found the temperature just then mosi undesirably keen, for someho * his salary had left no margin* for Avinter garments. He shivered on the journey to his friend's house, and he shivered when he went in, though he made believe heroically to have stirred up his circulation with an invigorating walk. His host gazed at him and fu!«eted a little and seemed unaccountably absent—"dried up," as we actors say—-in the most elementary conversation. Then he looked at his watch and said, "Nearly dinner time, by Jove! You'd like to go upstairs and have a wash," and led the way to the bedroom. Hanging over a chair was a suit .of uiiderc!othes-*-most uncommonly warm looking underclothes —of quite an attractive tint, and the host glanced hastily at this, and looked away as if trying to avoid them, Then he made for the door, went out, put his head in again and exclaimed, as if by a sudden and rather violent inspiration, 'Those clothes upon the chair, old man —upon my word, I think you'd better put 'em on. It's deuced cold for this time of year, 3*o know. The good fellow choked out the last word and shut the door quickly, and the poor actor sat down in the chair and burst into tears. "One of these two." writes Sir Henry, "has been dead these many years. He is not forgotten. That gift, which he could ill afford, still warms the heart of Ids old friend, who thinks, moreover, that the story is good to tell at