MADAME POMPADOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 208, 3 September 1927, Page 28

MADAME POMPADOUR.

"There is no character in history that provides more material for historical drama than the beautiful and criminally wicked woman known as Madame Pompadour," writes a critic. She was useless to herself and a curse to her country. She was easily the worst of the coterie of courtesans who disgraced the Court of Lows XV., and caused that insane monarch to devastate provinces, make wars and destroy thousands of his own and other monarchs' subjects. This is the difficult role that Miss Beppi de Vries presents with such wonderful realism in "Madame Pampadour," now playing to crowded audiences in Australia. Drama and tragedies have been written of that .period of voluptuous extravagance, but this is the first light opera presented of that particular period. In all the scenes Beppi de Vries proves herself to be a highly accomplished actress, and an indefinably more attractive and charming Pompadour than was the seductive original. She. scored a real triumph, and Frank Webster (an English tenor of note) aa Count Bene D'Estrades, our old friend Arthur Stigant as Calicot, the drunken lampoonist, and P. Cory as King Louis, share well [the honours. .