STAGE JOTTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 237, 3 October 1908, Page 12

STAGE JOTTINGS.

HIS MAJESTY'S THEATRE. Sept. 30 to Oct. 10 — Meynell and Gunn's Little Breadwinner Co. Oct. 17 — J. c. Williamson Oct. 26 to 31 — "Mrs Vv'iggs of the Cabbage l'ateh." OPERA HOUSE. Fuller's Vaudeville. "The Little Breadwinner" Company have been presenting a melodrama at His Majesty's this week that is constructed to depend upon the child interest for its success. But it is not as strong a play as some of its more immediate predecessors, which have relied upon a similar vein of sentiment. The company comprises some really excellent dramatic actors and actresses, and they will be seen to better advantage in later pieces. There is an amusing theatrical dispute in New York between Mr Henry Savage and Mr Harrison Fiske. Mr Savage asserted that he held the States and Canadian rights of the German play "Der Teufel" (The Devil), but Mr Fiske announced hig intention of producing a version. By conducting rehearsals at a barn in the country, he stole a march on the astute Mr Savage, and one morning that manager was confronted with an announcement that the play would be produced the following night. Although his own production was fixed for six weeks later, and the main players were widely separated, ho determined that he would not be beaten. With thirtysix hours' notice, the curtain went up on "Der Teufel" at the Oarden Theatre at the same moment that Mr Fiske's production started at the Belasco. According to newspaper critics, there is ample room in New York for both devils, but Mr Oeorge Arliss's impersonation of his Satanic Majesty in Mr Fiske's version is more refined and impressive and devilish than that of Mr Edwin Stevens, who is acting for Mr Savage. Both houses were crowded. According lo .Mr Savage, the next stage will be laid in the law courts, with Mr Fiske as the "double-dyed villain" of the piece. The Flemming Comedy Company opens a season at the Melbourne Princess to- ! night, when "The Morals of Marcus" will be staged for the first time in the Vie- I torian capital. | The Brewster's Millions Company have | now given over two hundred perform- j ances of the play in Australasia, and j have travelled about 15,000 miles in achieving this record. j The tines collected from members of the J. (.'. Williamson for | transgressions of the rules, are paid into j a provident fund to provide against ac- ' cident and sickness. j Mr Allan Hamilton announces a flying ; vaudeville tour through New Zealand j about the middle of next year, ending | with six nights in Auckland. "The com- j hination will be headed by the greatest , 'star' in the world of vaudeville," says the notice 1 have received. Surely we are not going to see the inimitable Harry Lauder? Miss Itose Musgrove and Miss Colia Ghiloni are members of the Hugh Ward Company that commences in Colombo this month, ami next year visits Australasia. The New Zealand tour opens in Invercargill in September. A special company has been organised by Mr Allan Hamilton to tour with "A Message from Mars." Queensland is their initial field. The earnings of English actors and actressus are described in a paper by Daisy Hailing and the lion. Charles Lister, which appears in the "Socialist Keview." They have drawn up a balancesheet which shows that the average member of a melodramatic provincial company earns 45/ a week, which, assuming that he has thirty weeks' employment in the year (allowing for the pantomime seison and the midsummer dulness), affords a total annual revenue of £07 10/. The problem of supporting life and a respectable appearance together upon this limited basis i.-, obviously a formidable one. According to the writers, there are levels of remuneration reaching far below this, and they strongly urge upon the profession the policy of agitating for a minimum wage. It was inevitable the Druce case should crop up in a stage play sooner or later. Mr James Willard's "mystery drama," "The Girl With tlie Angel Face," produced at the London .Shakespeare Theatre, is a sufficiently ingenious and exciting version of the theme. Tbe disappearing party in this case is, however, a murderous rubber king from the Congo, i Thomas Wentworth. lie comes back to England, and is suppo.-cd to be buried in West Marlow Church, but it is discovered in the end that the body secretly interred was bis wife. Matters are interestingly confused by Thomas having a twin brother, and a workhouse bral being substituted for a child who dies. We cull the following plaint from an interview with a harassed prompter: — "I. as prompter, had been kept very busy throughout the piece. In addition to keeping the actors on their lines, it was my duty to make all the outside noises. I had screamed 'Help!' I had shouted 'Kill him!' 1 had dropped planks to cover up deficient pistol reports. I had thundered, lightened, hailed, rained, sung like a woman, marched like an army, and howled like an infuriated rabble inflated by drink. The last straw was when tlie hero, pursued by hounds, sidled to the wings and hissed, 'Bark, you fool. bark. Why the dickens don't-vou bark?'" In response to an examiner's query as to who Oliver Cromwell was, a youth at a suburban school, says a writer in the Cape "Argus," gave a written reply that he wa sin actor who had played many times at the Capetown Opera House with Maisie Ellinger in "The Earl and the Girl." He had since died, and wa s succeeded by William Cromwell, who was no good. Such is fame! Mr. Charles Frohmann means to organise a Shakespearean celebration on original lines. He is arranging that the memory of the Bard shall be honoured on every April 2:' by the performance, in simple Elizabethan fashion, of a Shakesperean play by every one of the companies under his management. He will have thirty companies touring the United States next season, and on April 2,'J next each will appear in a play by Shakespeare. The choice of the play will be left to the company. "I hope," he says, "to interest other managers in this | plan, and if 1 a m successful Shakespeare.-, | day will be celebrated on our side of | the water by 500 to 700 different companies giving matinee performances of , Shakespeare's plays." J The vaudeville stage is the thing. Miss Vesta Tilley opened her engagement at the Palace, Douglas, 1.0.M., to a record ho'ise in August, 8500 people paid for admission, and the enormous ballroom was packed during the forty-five minutes she occupied the stage, during the interval in ! the dancing, etc. This breaks all records at the Palace, there being twice a s many I people as attended the Melba concert a fey weeks earlier, 1 I

"Peter Pan" has not proved a success and, after a trial in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide the company combines with the "Brewster's Millions" company in a revival of such plays as "Dorothy Vernon," "Sunday," and, possibly, "The Girl from the Golden West." Mrs. Brough, Miss Emma Temple, and Mr. Kingston will be in the cast, with Miss Tittel Brune. It is difficult to exactly place the cause of the failure of this fanciful creation of Barries genius, after London, New York, and Paris have all stamped it with the hall-mark of a popular as well as an artistic success. It does not speak well for Australian taste. But, apart from this, from such private reports as I have received, I should judge that in modifications calculated to make a star I part for Miss Tittel Brune the atmos- I phere of the play had suffered. There is no star part in "Peter Pan," and an effort to create one is to the detriment of the play. Mrs. Brown Potter is back to the legitimate again. I notice that she was making a successful performance in "Lady Frederick" in Brighton in August. At present in London a morbid fit Is on top —ail variety sketches must be j eoul-searching. And the consequence is all sorts of awful sketches, blood-curdling and saucy, are drawing audiences. Some of 'em are saucy—the others just timefilling! But they are all bad! A revival of "Le Tours dv Monde en 80 Jours," the great Jules Verne romance, has been a great success at the Paris Theatre dv Chatelet. An Australian drama, "A Miner's Trust," by Mr Joe Smith, of Melbourne, is to be staged in Sydney by Messrs. Meynell and Gunn next month. I Bernhardt is down for performances of "Cyrano de Bergenia" in Australia. Don't bp surprised to tee the one and only Coquelin here. Arthur Collins, the Drury Lane man- j ager, has been making overtures to Sweet Nell Stewart for a short, sharp run of several pieces of tlie Nell-Gwynne type. ; Another statement recently made is that Miss Stewart will appear in Melbourne! shortly in old English comedies. | Mr. Charles Vane, who was recently in Australia fulfilling a two years' engagement with Messrs. Meynell and Gunn. has left London for India and the Far East, where he will sustain a round of j leading parts under the management of , Mr. Maurice Bandmann. ! Miss Florence Hamer, whose artistic comedy studies are a pleasant memory of local playgoers, is now leading lady of . the Bandmann organisation, which, to the I East, is what Williamson is to Australia, j The Wren Opera Company have put ! on a better performance in "The Lily of Killarney" than in "l*es Cloches." It is interesting to recall that it was as Myles-na-t'oppaleen in this opera that Howard Vernon made his first appearance in Mcl- . bourne over thirty years ago. | I 1 notice that dainty Alice Pollard takes l the name-part in the Wheeler South African production of "The Merry! | Widow." Much interest is being taken in Rus- , slan theatrical circles in an action which | Mile. Zeru'eff, the well-known Moscow actress, is bringing against an American beauty doctor, who undertook to change her complexion from blonde to brunette. For two months she underwent the "cure," when suddenly her blonde skin i became a striking shade of green. She j now claims 25,000 roubles damages. | Pius X.'s attitude towards the drama ! is evidently most favourable. lie has sent his blessing to a new theatre at j Malta, which has been built under the auspices of the St. Patrick's Young Men's ! Society. It bears the title of "The House j of Youth," and it is proposed to use the theatre for the performance of high-class plays and operas. At the opening per-| formance, says the "Universe," a tele-j gram was received from the Papal Secre- J taiy of «-:tate, Cardinal Merry del Val, I conveying the Apostolic blessing "upon i an enterprise which much interests him.'' "Tlie theatrical sensation of Paris just! now is a freak play bearing the title | "Chanticleer," written by Kdniond Kos- i jtand, the author of "l.'Aiglon.'' When the manuscript was delivered £10,000 was paid as a deposit on account of the author's royalties. This play is unique byreason of the fact that there is not a single human being in it. The characters comprise birds and animals—the ordinary denizens of a farmyard —and it is in a| farmyard that the scene of this decidedly original poetic drama is laid. The com- j mon farmyard rooster is the hero; the. golden, pheasant is the heroine: and M. ! Jean joquelin growls blank verse in the ■, guise of :ui old watchdog. A broody old i hen. who sits in one corner on a nest and j makes caustic remarks on behalf of i i virtue, is one of the features of the piece, j jit was thought before the play was produced that the actors would simply make | up so as to suggest the characters they j represent, but it was found by the as-1 tonished critics on the first night that j the players had absolutely sunken their ■ identity and gone the entire fowl." Referring to Mr. Beerbohni Tree, a writer in London "Truth" says: —"In all the twenty-one years ot his brilliant man- j agenicnt 1 cannot recall any one new, and successful dramatist brought out by Mr. Tree. Shakespeare has always been his strong card, '"or the autumn he is ■ announcing a new play, it is true, but only a new version of that old, old story j 'Faust.' 1-et mc suggest that he should celebrate his coming-of-age as a manager j by producing a new play by a new j author." Graeie Plaisted. who will bo remembered by an older generation of playgoers as one of the most fascinating figures in I comic opera parts ever -seen at the Antipodes, died in San Francisco in August. " Henry Irving did not treat mc badly. I did not treat him badly. He revived ' Faust,' and: produced ' Dante.' 1 would have liked to stay with him to the end of the chapter, but 1 could not act in either of these plays. But we never quarrelled. Our long partnership dissolved naturally. It was all very sad, but it could not be helped." Thus writes Miss ; Ellen Terry (Mrs. drew) in "MjClure's i Magazine." Miss Terry is writing of " East years with Henry Irving," and I though her closing words, which we have I quoted, sound a note of sorrowful regret, ; her reminiscences of her long association i with Irving are of the most generous and j cheerful character. (She tells us incidenti ally that she refused-an offer of .1' 12,000 to jro to America with Irving in "Dante." Theatre-goers in Paris are delivered from tlie big hat nuisance. The police I regulations concerning theatres, published in August, prohibit categorically 1 the toleration by the management of any . conditions that may prevent the public j from seeing or hearing the performance. I Even the voluminous style of dl'essing the ; hair may create difficulty for a iioman, as the ordinance says: "If complaint be : made by a spectator that because of the headdress of anyone before him he cannot see, the cause of the complaint must bo iremoved." In other words the ehi<*- • non must be taken off or a lady must ! leave. Women in the theatres will no longer enjoy greater liberty than men. THE DEADHEAD.