THEATRE ROYAL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18151, 14 August 1924, Page 7

THEATRE ROYAL.

"FAIR AND WARMER." The Nellie Bramley Co. played "Fair and VTarmer" to mother capacity house last night. The comedy, vrhich on occasions in the second and third acts develops, by its riotous progression, into "a. cataclysm oi faroe, comes from the pen of an able playwright, Mr Avery Hopwocd, and is characterised not only by strength of construction and an excellent development of interest, but also by arresting diuioguj and many striking lines." It tells of the troubles of a couple ideally mated to the outward eye but who narrowly escape matrimonial shipwreck as the very outcome of that placii harmony. The wile, p.rhaps no more foolish than the average wum.m, creates for herself a grievance inasmuch as rur husband gives her no occasion for alarm or even anxiety. Certainly the husband possess _d a perfection of conduct which mTgtit reasonably cause a wo.nan to beco.n. suspicious, but it is hard to imagine that any wife cf experience wou'd entertain a genuine belief in her husband's ' ineffablen.ss" and at the same time an ardent desire that he should, to show his manhood, become something of a rake. The husband in the first act was undoubtedly a charact.-r calculated to try the patience of anybody. He was a complex of negatives, a yerv moratorium of a man, but even at his awful besl he hardly deserved the fate his exasp -rated and somewhat wife intended, that or separation. His affection for his wife was the only sentiment that animated his peculiarly aloof nature, and th - sho?k oi the threatened, parting, coming at a time when he imagined that all was right as right could be, wrought in him a-violent change. He sought counsel with an .eld ccflcge chum, and acting on that gentleman's most egregious advicr, forthwith projected hims?lf into a whirlpool of complications which set two households .at stormy loggerheads. "Carry on with some other woman" advised the college chum, "any woman will "■\Vhat time or company like the present," reasoned the hitherto mo'lei husband, arid seizing the opportunity when he was left alone with the wife of his friend, that lady also cherishing a grievance, mutatis mutandis, in respect of her husband—he. with the able 00-operation of the second party, the lady, embarked upon a carousal, the nature of vv-hich would try the sternest stuff of the most hardened sinner. In a sorry plight the two were ultimafply discovered _by nn indignant wife nnd a thundsr bellowing' husband, and the rights and wrongs of whole situation were, after a storm-tossed passage, finall' - adjuster). "Fair and "Warmer" will be repeat :d tonight.

"Peg o' My Heart." "Peg o' My Heart" is on of those comedies that live forever and will go on making friends to the end of the chapter. The Nellie Bramley Company will make their first Christchurch appearance in the comedy on Monday nig\ht; "Undoubtedly," says an Auckland reviewer. "Miss Bramley surprised many of her audience by the merit of her performance, and her interpretation of the whimsical Irish girl who so quickly probed the foibles of her impecun'ous guardians. Spontaneously the audience applauded her passionate devotion to her father; her sportsmanlike championing of the cause of her pet, Michael, when th» hitter was fighting her cousin's Pom., and with equal warmth did they support the recalcitrant and defiant Peg, when she rebelled against the too rigid propriety of that English home. It waß a lovable 'little devil' that prompted Peg all through. Miss Bramley's performance of Peg was a veritable triumph." The remaining essential charac!e;s will be enacted by Mr George Hewlett as Jerry, Miss Svlvia McNair as Mrs Chichester, Mis 3 Ethel "Bashford as Ethel Ohichestjr. Mr John Galway as Alaric, and Mr Guy Hastings as Chris. Brent. The box plan is at The Bristol