BLAND HOLT.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 318, 3 October 1908, Page 6

BLAND HOLT.

A CHARACTER SKETCH. " Bland Holt I The name is a theatrical tradition' in these parts. Not that the popular actor is so old. A man is as old as he feels, and a woman as she looks, and Bland Holt feels about twenty-one. The wonderful vitality of his chiracterisationa is really the temperament of the'man himself. -He is an indefatigable .worker^, believing that there is'no solid recreation like work. If you want a thing done well do it yourself, is a fetish with Mr. Holt,- who is as bland as his Christian name. -He is his ■ own stage manager, superintending, every thing in person, leaving nothing to, chance in tno person -of somebody else ( and doing, it' all with the greatest consiaeration for. everyone else. Bland Holt is more . loyal than any of the heroes in his plays, has a sweeter disposition than any of the heroines : he histrionically sticks to, and for him the clouds have, no silver lining—they are at' silver. His twinkling eye is the correct index of his soul. Ask any. of tho members of his company—Charlie Brown; Walter Baker, Albert Norman, and the more mod- ; era acquisitions—Maxwell, Harford, Eemp,V They all take off their hat to ".the boss. Loyal! Tho word is no empty vaunt. Glance down the names on the. bill, and those who remember will seo six ' or eight names that were with'tho company when it . last toured New Zealand, the' longest' ser- ' vice actor, Charles Brown, comedian, whose connection dates back for .nigh on a quarter of a century.' Miss Harric Ireland's term of Holtian servico runs well into the second decade, and those with ; the well-developed theatrical .memory will remember thelengthy engagements served by Walter Howe, Albert Norman, Walter Baker, and Miss Frances Ross. There irf> several members of the present company that have served well over ten years under this aetor-mana-ger-optimist, and, like users of'somebody's baking powder, they want no other. This pretty well proves the type—the rare typo —represented in tho -person of Bland Holt, who, by the way, has not the slightest suspicion that anything of this character is boing written of him. It is nine years sinco Mr. and Mrs. Holt smiled across the footlights of the Wellington Opera House, but the road to yesterday seems to foreshorten as the crows' feet come, and tho old welcome will assuredly, be given thesehonest actor folk'!, this ovening, or tho writer's judgment is astray.