A NOTABLE ACTOR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 20, 24 January 1916, Page 4

A NOTABLE ACTOR.

Of all artists the actor suffers most from time. His art is writ in water, Men still young can remember the Brough companies, with their excellent repertoire of plays and their fine even acting, but to the rising generation their name conveys nothing. The death of-Mr. George Titheradge, the most accomplished of those players, will awaken in people of older generations memories both pleasant and sad—pleasant because they will remember evenings of delightful entertainment, when art had free play, and was not subordinated either to vulgarity or commercialism; and sad because there seems to be no disposition on the part of managers to give them a similar combination of good plays and good acting. Mr. Titheradge was probably the most finished and versatile actor who visited New Zealand during the last thirty years. He belonged to the old school, in which training was hard and thorough, and embraced a great range of drama. To have to master two or three new parts in "a week, to play Shakespeare one night, Sheridan the next, and may-be Lytton or H. J. Byron the third, was an experience that enabled a man with natural ability and zeal to become a thoroughly wellequipped actor, ready to play, at- least adequately, 'any part that might be given to him. Trained under the old "barn - 6'torming" system, Mr. Titheraige was. able, to adapt himself to the more natural Styles of acting introduced in the last halfcentury, and the' most remarkable feature of his work as we saw it here was its absolute fidelity to nature. He had the rare ability of giving the audience rthe impression of a man moving and speaking just as he would if there had been a fourth wall on the stage. Pose was rigidly excluded from his art; he never "played to the gallery." To see him on his last visit, even in a secondrate drawing-room play, was to realise how greatly this kind of acting had deteriorated in this part of the world, while to see him amid the mingled gems and frippery of Wilde -was a sheer delight. Unfortunately, New Zealand saw little or nothing of him in really great drama, but he left a memory.. of polished and subtle acting and subordination' of. everything to art -which will always be cherished by his admirers. The prospect of seeing such fine acting in the near future is not bright. Managers show no- desire to

give us another Brough combination, and the public does not seem to want it. Plays that make smaller demands on the intellect, and acting that con- . i forms to lower standards, are popular i enough to fill the theatres.