STAGE JOTTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 19, 22 January 1916, Page 14

STAGE JOTTINGS.

Mr Harold ABliton, who has been connected with the J. C. Williamson organisation for a number of years, has been appointed associate director to the firm. Mr Aehton, who returned to Melbourne recently from South .Africa, where for two years he managed thej.C.Williamsonr Ltd:,- interests- in that conntry as. resident managing director, will leave at the end of this month for America, to secure new attractions and artiets for J. C. Williamson, Ltd., in Australasia and South Africa. AucklandUrs, will be pleased to know that Miss Kitty Campion, who went Home to continue her studies, has been fortunate enough to secure an engagement with an influential concert club in the West End of London, and after her first appearance she received a charming letter from the organiser, Mrs. Craies, ■who wrote as follows: " I don't think for a moment you half realised how we all loved your beautiful singing. I have had so many enthusiastic letters and remarks that I wish you could have seen and heard." Mme. Albani has just celebrated her C3rd birthday. ' Her parents, M. and Mme. Lajeuneeae, who were living near Montreal when she was born, were themselves skilled musicians, the father being of French and the mother of Scotch descent. The prima donna made her debut at Messina in 1870, and first appeared in London at the Royal Italian Opera in -1572. She has sung.in all the chief cities and towns of Canada, the United States, Australia, : South Africa, and India. Although she married an Englishman (Mr. Ernest Gye, the impresario), and hae made her; home in England, she has declared that she " still remains at heart a French-! Canadian." Miss Sarah Allgood, who has been engaged to, play the name part in the forthcoming J. and N. Tait .production oj "Peg o . My Heart" in AiMtraUa and New Zealand, has won immense success in that.comedy in England. Mies Allgood,' who brings to the portrayal of tbre role the bewitching brogue and elusive half-smile that make the Irish heroine an unforgettable figure, hae had wide experience as an Irish interpreter. An Irishwoman horn and bred, she was one of the first of Ireland's young intellectual actresses to be drawn into the Irish theatre movement, -which was inaugurated at the Abbey Dublin. Mies Allgood's talent soon brought her to the front of the Irish phiyers, and today she is the most celebrated member of that famous combination, with some life-like portraite of Synge and Yeats'characters.:tp her credit. A young Auckland violinist has evidently made a deep impression on the music-loving people of Wanganui. The "Chronicle" aays:-"The Opera, House was packed in every part, even including 4he stage, while many iad to be turned away, on the occasion of the recital given by Henri Liasack, the gifted young Russian violinist. The audience must have been, amazed at the marvellous performance <&' tEa little-.twelse-yeax.-old Uuir "especially., in: view of. the. fact that he.'.hae"nad .only, eighteen moajtoi'* tuition; He submitted an ambitious programme, the numbers of which he played with great skill. Hie technique is remarkably good, whDe lie demonstrated the possession of artistic' temperament 'to aVJSarkcd.' degrefc,;'.HaSr* tier Henri Liesa'ck" undoubtedly, *'.'hw 4\ great future, especially if he can obtain ;he advantages of Continental tuition." ' The George Marlow pantomime, "Dick Whittington." on at the Adelphi (Sydney), is in two acts. The finale.to. t\<&.. flret half consists" in 60' girls, most, of them in tights, coming out behind the boxes on one side of the stage, marching in single file up one aisle of the theatre to the back of the building, then across to and down the other aisle, up behind the boxes on this side, and on to the stage for the curtain. Thus are the performers and the audience brought into more than ordinarily close touch with one another. Very effective is the gold ballet —all the girts being in shimmering robes of gold—in the opening of the J second wt. But most attractive in this respect is the ballet in which 25 girls I ' appear, in a soft leather body-covering to the hips, with bare arms, and barelegged up to the scantiest of coverings i'u the form of leather-coloured trunks.

"Those who can recall the last 25 years (not to go farther back) of the Australian theatre" (saye the writer of "PJaye4ind Players," in "Sydney Daily Telegraph"), "will see a very few figures prominently outstanding in that perspective. Mr ,T C. Williamson was a theatrical master, great stage manager, and pretty good American, whose reminiscences went back to the days of "old man; Wallack" and the Civil War—which he tiied. several times to get into, and was only, drafted for service just as peace wae proclaimed. Mr Wiliamson's nicety oi dress was always one of his noticeable characteristics, and he once told this writer that that got him his first engagement with Wallack, who, after being besought day arter day by the spruce and handsome James Cassius, at last admitted admiration for the persistent youth's "good dressing," and on the strength of it gave him an engagement. Mr Williamson couldn't "sit upon the ground and tell etrange stories ot the-death of kings"; but he had been ■with Jefferson; ho had made "Struck Oil" world famoils, though it was a ekeleton of a play when he first laid hands on it; and he made "Djin Djin" and "Matsa," the only big spectacular things Australia has produced. "Rignold, too. A super-theatrical, however you take him. An actor perhaps I never surpassed for versatility and satis-, i faction in this country's record. Though Ihe made his earlier name as Henry V., centre-staged in shining armour and declaiming the heroic soliloquies that crowd the role, in Australia we saw him in an incomparable range. As tho pathetic ! Colonel Ghallis in 'AJone,' aa the ex- . plosive Macari in 'Called Back,'- as the [fretful Mortimer in 'Confusion, , and — I above all—as the greasy, jocular, insinuating Ingoldsby Devil in 'Faust.' And : a great play-handler, Rignold. Many j i a melodrama came to him hot and raw j J which he" held and revieed and recast j until it finally appeared triumphant atj Her Majesty's, where the crowd never kn.ew that the. play they roared, about had been labouriously "made over" by the imperious 'boss.' Certainly as big a man: intellectually as physically. One thinks back, to a testimonial performance at which, .appearing before the curtain to take; plaudits, he publicly gave thanks that he had never offered the public 'French, filth or modern English nastiness.' He had not. He wae a great , actor and a great stage manager. . Mr Boucieault numerically completes a trio'iat Australian celebrities, and thus helps to crown the record of those gone years. It is true that to many nothing of to-day is comparable to what was yesterday; equally true that tastes change, and that the play that made father roar or sent him home a sadder and a wiser man leaves son bored or inquisitive as to where the laugh comes in. But allowing for all that, and for whatever else may have to be thrown in, Mr Bbucicault must be adjudged the prime -'producer , of the politer drama within living Australian memory. In ite palmy day? the Brough-Boucicault company was-as near perfection in the presentation of farce and comedy as could humanly wished it It had Ansou, Pattie edge,! Cecil Ward, Mrs Brough, Pattie Browftc; "Mrs Romer, and Brough and Bpyeicaßl.t themselves. One remembers Mr ■ Bouoicault's Frenchman in "Too Amawms,' his sympathetic friend-of-the-houise in Tho Second Mre Tanqueray,' and a score of other fine individual performances. But ever above tuese one reflects on the fine (and perhaps hereditary) stage craft that led up to brilliant representation of fine old-time plays, in waioJi rehearsal and constructive stage management and the instruction of individual players more or less talented counted for all. Of such are (or were) 'ffriends,' 'A Scrap of Paper,' and the incomparable era-scries whose authors included Pinero, Gr'undy, Chambers, Jones, and Wilde. Before hie time and since it, there has been no more creative stage manager in this country than Mr Boucicault, none co minutely artistic, none more earnest and thorough."

A Melbourne paper says:—"Dorothy Hastings, who sings the bright movies number, whioh precedes the original Chaplin dance in "Stop Your Nonsense, at the King's, is a New Zealand girl who takes her stage name from the place of licr birth. In "Stop Your Nonsense" she plays the leading lady in Burlesko's dramatic company. In Sydney recently she made a decided hit as the laughing girl in that excellent comedy, "Who's the, LadyV THE DEADHEAD.