THE STAGE IN SYDNEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE STAGE IN SYDNEY.

PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

(By a Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, April 24.

The theatrical sensation of the week is the mad marriage of Charley Sylber and May Daly, -which is to.take place on the stage to-night after the performance of "Laughing Eyes," while the curtain is still up. This seems to be the limit to which publicity can go, but you can't tell these days. They, may introduce basinettes yet behind the footlights. There would have been more privacy in a 'plane wedding, which was the first intention of. these two brighty young things, bub it was decided that more people would' pay to see a stage wedding than a'plane one. Hence, this! Charley Sylber has been 'married before. His wife was Marie Paris, who was here as a dancer with "Rio Rita." May Daly has had a sensational sort of life all the time —and she is not twenty yet. She was crippled with rheumatism as a young girl and after being given up by several doctors as an incurable invalid, she took some massage treatment which so successfully cured her that she was enabled to take dancing lessons. The next thing was that she joined the ballet when the Empire Theatre opened here in a blaze of trumpets about four years ago. She was soon given understudies and rose to small parts. When "Whoopee" was done at that theatre some time later she met Charley Sylber, who was the leading comedian in that musical mixture. He went back to America at the close of the season and Frank Neil took over his part and, indeed, the company, for the Melbourne season. That is close on three years ago. Now Charley Sylber has come back for the St. James productions, reappearing in "Laughing Eyes." In the meantime May Daly joined the J. C. Williamson chorus, was given the understudy of the leading role in "Sons o' Guns" and sang and acted that part for one of the Tait brothers in Melbourne, at a rehearsal specially arranged for her. The idea was that she was to be considered for leads for the second company going through the small towns and to Tasmania. She was given the chance to play these and a contract was made out. Then news came to her that Mr. Sylber was returning. She resigned, not only from the new contract, but from the chorus of "Sons o' Guns" so as to go to Sydney to meet him. This happened and their marriage was to have taken place quietly on the following Monday after the show of "Laughing Eyes" opened. The day before that auspicious Monday word came to her that she was to go back to Melbourne to play the lead in "Sons o' Guns" for Bertha Riccardo, who had to step out of the cast on account of her husband being missing on the lost 'plane Southern Cloud. May Daly played the part for several nights and then returned to Sydney when Miss Riccardo took up her part again.

There is a spectacular scene done in •black and white with a moving staircase in the finale of "Laughing Eyes," and it is in this locale that the wedding will take place. The theatre is being decorated to-day by Searls, and a huge wedding cake is being made hy Sergeants, arid besides! this it is intended that every lady in the audience to-night will receive a piece of wedding cake in a box and every member of the audience will have a glass of wine. The wedding dress is on show in a leading dressmaker's in the city. Mr. Chas. Ulm is to be the best man, and Miss Janette Gilmore the leading bridesmaid, or matron of honour. The chorus girls will be the other bridesmaids. Jim Gerald will give the bride away, and, although there was some hesitation among the fraternity, a clergyman has eventually been secured to tie the knot. The bride's mother is in the Home for Incurables at Ryde, but she will probably be brought to the theatre and will see the ceremony from one of the boxes. If this is not found practicable she will listen in. The whole thing seems very mad and modern, but the house is booked out.

Something -is doing in the J. C. Williamson world, but besides the fact that conferences are being held daily in the offices and the entire personnel of the staff are now in Sydney for them, the secret is being well guarded. It has been rumoured that the theatres are all to be wired so that they can be used for talkies when required, but it may go deeper than this, and I believe it does.

"The Duchess of Dantzic" is due on Saturday for a short run before "The Love Race" takes over Her Majesty's. A second visit to "Dearest Enemy" deepens the' impression of how much, improved in her art Dorothy' Brunton is—and the stage is an art where she is concerned. Her voice is stronger and sweeter and firmer, and her acting is delightful in this role of the Irish girl who loves an enemy soldier in the War of Independence. When Dorothy speaks with an Irish accent it is an Irish accent. She ought to he well suited as the devil-may-care laundress-duches6 in the next play.

Ethel Morrison has come up so well in public favour—another New Zealander, don't forget!—that people are talking of the good old days of Mrs. Brough when they speak of her. "The First Mrs. Fraser" has shown her to us as an actress of such rare versatility as we seldom see nowadays.

"On the Spot" in Melbourne has not gone over very well. The management think it is due to the theatre—the Comedy, where plays of a more delicate fabric have been presented since it opened—but my personal opinion is that Melbourne has not got the crime complex in its theatres and does not care for the rawness of this Wallace piece. Humphrey Bishop is in negotiation for the Palace Theatre, and may open a season there shortly. The last company closed rather suddenly. Vaudeville is gradually creeping back. Connors and Paul are breezing along brightly at the New Haymarket. They have been joined by Mo after his New Zealand sojourn. Joan Fuller, professionally' known as Joan.Graham, is still with them. Jim Gerald is going to join forces with Ernest C. Rolls for his next production. . Russian dancing is taking hold of Sydney, and Greek dancing is quick on the patent leather heels of the Slavs. A cachet was given to one Russian school by the fact that the wife of the Theosophical Bishop, Mrs. Arundel, was the star pupil. She had studied Indian dances in her own land (being from India), and introduced these as well as the Russian peasant dances. These folks, known as the Lightfoot-Burlakov Russian Ballet School, are endeavouring to bring back something of the spirit of our dear lost Pavlova, and they have many of her ballets, "Bindle Wakes" is to be the next effort of the Independent Theatre this coming Saturday. This is the piece that made England sit up and stare in 19l?» It sets forth the theory of the doublo standard of moralty for men and women. Sybil Thorndyke made her name in it in Manchester, when Miss Horniman's Repertory Company did it, and afterwards in London. Frank Bradley, who will play Napoleon in "The Duchess of Dantzic" when it goes on on Saturday night at Her Majesty's, is so used to this role that* he could play it in his sleep. Besides playing it in amateur productions in his callow youth when "Waterloo," the one-act play which used to be such 'a favourite of the late Sir Henry Irving, was his star piece, in Adelaide, the part was the first he procured in' England when he went there to try his luck. That was in the musical version of "The Duchess of Dantzic," and he followed Holbrooke Blinn. Later he played it on I the legitimate stage in "A Royal Divorce."