STAGE JOTTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 7 (Supplement)

STAGE JOTTINGS.

AROUND THE FOOTLIGHTS.

the woeld of the theatre. Considerable impetus should be given tr> University College dramatic circles through the knowledge and experience of ihci newly-appoirtted professor of English, Mr. W. A. Sewell, -who is reported tq be keenly interested in drama and the ftagel While in Capetown, where he was attached to the University staff, he acted in and produced some of the best amateur plays seen in the city. Mr. Sewell expects to reach Auckland on February 26, and is travelling from South Africa via Europe and America, combining a holiday with business.

Six performances of "Parsifal," four of "The Mastersingers" and three complete cycles of "The Ring" will make up the programme of next summer's Wagner festival plays at Bayreuth, Cermany, which begin on July 22 and end on August 23. Richard Strauss will again conduct "Parsifal" and nearly all the singers who took part last summer will be in the caste in 1934. Among male singers will bo Burg, Janssen, Kremer, Lorenz, Fritz Wolff and Zinimermann. Women stars include Bcrglund, Leider and Maria Miller.

A romantic rise to fame is being enjoyed in Germany by Miss Margery Booth, an English girl, who is building up a great reputation at the Berlin State Opera, fc>he is being given more and more important parts. Miss Booth was born in Lancashire and studied at the Guildhall School of- Music. After singing in several minor parts at the Bayreuth festival this summer she was siren a contract in Berlin. English singers so seldom make a mark in the Herman operatic world that her career is being watchcd with great interest.

Chicago had a taste of a German production of tho essentially German Oberammergau Fassion Play for fonr nights, starting December 12. Marie Mayer, who achieved fame on the Khine as Mary Magdalene, played a similar role, while Eugene Filip, a popular portrayer of the Christ Child, was also in the cast. During the production the musical interludes contained selections from Handel's "Messiah," with special solo atid choral effects. Tho thoroughly American management, deeming its mass-appeal insufficient, als6 advertised a film for screening on the same programme.

Eva Le Gallienne, the distinguished actress who has directed the New York Civic Repertory Theatre for the last seven years, a few weeks ago started for Chicago on the first step of an extended tour which it was rumoured might take her across the United States to Australia and New Zealand. She took with her three plays that have made notable successes during her career as an actress-manager—"Alice in Wonderland," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Hedda Gabler." Tho first of these three was to have been staged in Chicago on Christmas night and over the New Year celebrations. Siit-y members of her New York organisation accompanied her.

In the course of a visit this week Mr. Erie MeElwain, now of Wellington, | who has been in Australia on holiday, has some interesting notes of personalities known to Aticklanders to record. He mentions E. J. Gravestook, the wellknown entrepreneur, is now manager of the St. James' Theatre, Sydney. He has recently been conducting a series of highly successful broadcasts on "The Experiences of an Entrepreneur," having gleaned his subject matter from his work in bringing out many of the great concert artists who have appeared in New Zealand and Australia for years past.; E. J. Roberts, the J.C.W. musical conductor, has been working in connection with broadcasts from 2BL, Sydney. Also Miss Evelyn Lynch, who is well known here, keeps in the limelight through grand opera broadcasts.

The stage role taken by Gladys Cooper in Somerset Maugham's melodrama "The Painted Veil" will be Greta Garbo's part in the picture, the rights of which have been secured by MetroGold wyn-Mayer. Production will be started shortly, the setting being the Malay States. Another famous play to be filmed is Bernard Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple," which has been sold to Radio Pictures for John Barry more. The action takes place during the American War of Independence. This will be the first Shavian subject done at Hollywood. "How He Lied to Her Husband" and "Arms and the Man" were, of course, made at Elstree under the supervision of the well-known author shortly to visit this Dominion.

George Bernard Shaw's newest play — his first singe 1932's "Too True to be Good" —was staged at the Winter Garden Theatre London, on Saturday, November 27. Entitled "On the Kocks," the play has received typical praise from the London critics, who in . their unchanging outlook on Shavianism and its products, invariably mingle criticism regarding the famous dramatist's introduction of time-worn but effective "tricks of .the trade" with their assumption that every line he writes, every joke which he perpetrates in his sheer inability to resist a joke, is there for a purpose, a motive. So "On the Rocks," a' typical satire on modern politics, is in their viewpoints being used to express the Shavian outlook with regard lo the present Ministry in England and its unspectacular, : but thoroughly English methods of dealing with great problems of the day, such as unemployment. The "critics, however, all agree tliat the-play is excellent and the "News-Chronicle" correspondent even goes as far as to say that he deems it "the finest play Bernard Shaw has written." W. A. Darlington, of the "Daily Telegraph," sees a reawakening of the allegedly moribund Shavian wit, while M. Willson Disher, of the "Daily Mail," writes with veiled poniard-point: "There is plenty of Mr. Shaw's intellectual vigour and flashes of his old wit. The fault is his indulgence in humour so banal as to make every listener who is not a fanatical show addict writhe as though undergoing a mild torture."