“LOVE IN IDLENESS”

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25092, 25 January 1947, Page 9

“LOVE IN IDLENESS”

OPENING OF CHRISTCHURCH SEASON

“Love In Idleness,” a brilliant and amusing play opening at the Theatre Royal, Christchurch, to-night for a season of six nights, has as its central theme the old and well-tried one of the eternal triangle. In the hands of the young playwright, Terence Rattigan, the theme is clothed in witty* dialogue that pokes fun at the sin of taking one self too seriously.

The fluttering, ineffectual mistress and mother, Olivia Brown, is played by Kathleen Robinson, who in the four months that she has been jn New Zealand hati endeared herself to her audiences wherever she has played. Miss Robinson is an Australian who graduated from the Royal College of Dramatic Art and followed in the tradition of actor-managers by produc-

ing and performing in several plays in her own theatre in London—the Duke of York. She returned to Australia early in the war, and has been producing plays in her Minerva Theatre. Sydney, for the last six years. She is a director of Whitehall Theatrical Productions, Ltd. Richard Parry plays delightfully the polished, suave Sir John Fletcher of the play. To him falls the development of most of the situations in the play, and this very competent actor extracts the full measure from the dialogue and the scene. Richard Parry has had considerable experience on the London stage, and played in “St. Joan” when that play was produced by G. B. Shaw himself.

Ron Rousell is an Australian “find.” He brilliantly portrays the priggish, intolerant, eighteen-year-old son of Olivia Brown who disturbs the domestic bliss of Sir John Fletcher and his mofier.