"IF."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1928, Page 15

"IF."

MYSTERIOUS EASTERN PLAY

The Little Theatre Society has now given Auckland something that is new, really worth while and exotic. After nearly three years of life, it has been wise enough to eschew what is more or less "safe" and has attempted a play full of risks. There is, however, nothing high-brow about Lord Dunsany's "If," a play of mystery and imagination in four acts. Fanciful to a degree, it is vibrant with action, and crowded with colour. In opening a season of four nights in the Town Hall Coaurt Chamber last night : the society presented "If" to an audience which appr-ica -'d tb.e fact that the merits of the production outweighed its more obvious faults. The organiser and producer, Mr. Kenneth Brampton, has been well rewarded for his weeks of labour and must be congratulated. It is neither necessary nor desirable to describe too closely the action of the plot. John Beal, hum-drum Londoner, content with his wife in a suburban villa, comes into possession of a crystal with magic properties. It enables him to turn back the pages in the book of life ten years, and to catch a train which he had missed. He is whisked away from his conventional haunts to Al Shaldomir, a mythical country of the East, which is not even on the map! Inspired by Miralda Clements, a beautiful English adventuress who would be queen of that enchanted land, John becomes Lord of the Pass, and lives a sort of Arabian Nights existence. In the short space of an hour, he lives through ten years of excitement and romance.

That elusive thing called atmosphere has been cleverly caught and held in the Eastern scenes. Without so much as a whiff of incense, and with only a hanging lamp, a few drapings and a couple of stone columns, the producer has created the inscrutable East. Haunting music, the distant throb of torn toms and melodious songs of the Orient heighten the effect. The banquet scene might be improved, were the stage commodious, but it is astonishing what has been done in such difficult conditions. The colour schemes are beautiful.

No one of the *21 players in the cast was wooden or lacking in character, and the action and diction of the players was, on the whole, admirable. Mr. Montagu Steele, as John Beal, carried the burden of the play with ability and distinction. With the single exception of the opening domestic scene, where though he presented capably and the English type, he was not thoroughly at home with his young wife, his work was convincing, natural and never exaggerated. Miss Marie Gaudin shares the honours with Mr. Steele. Her Miralda Clements was a hypnotic personality, always regal, charged with the lure of a beautiful if unscrupulous woman. Miss Beryl Nettleton, the only other lady prominent in the cast, played John BeaFs wife with credit, though she was not quite as ultra-conventional as the action would seem to demand. The clever work of Mr. Fred. E. McCallum, as the faithful servant, Daoud, was rewarded with applause. Mr. Maurice Ballance as the plotting sheik, Hafiz el Alcolahu, Captain Redmond as the brigand lord, Ben Hussein, and other players in Eastern roles maintained a high standard. There was something dream-like in the sudden appearance from the desert of Archie Beal (Mr. J. N. Gordon), especially as he was attired in European clothes and a bowler hat! Mr. Rex Yates, who excelled in character work 16 years ago, and Mr. Geo. G. Spicer, were crisp and vivid as Cockney railway porters. The great Australian expletive was spat out without offending anyone. Favourable mention must be made of Miss Alma McGruer's solo and Miss Bettina Edwards' voluptuous dance, in the banquet scene. Artistic incidental music arranged by Mrs. R. A. Singer, the stage management of Miss Peggy Hovey and Mr. McCallum, and the realism of the scenes, which were executed by Messrs. Arnold Goodwin and T. V. Gulliver, contributed in full measure to the success of the Little Theatre Society's best effort to date. I