PLAYS AND PLAYERS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 194, 18 May 1928, Page 16

PLAYS AND PLAYERS

SOME COMING ATTRACTIONS

INTERVIEW WITH MR. GEORGE PARKER

Mr. George Parker, of the J. C. Williamson staff of producers, is paying a short visit to Wellington for the purpose of producing a new play with the Maurice Moscoviteh Company. The nmv offering is seri-comic melodrama, “The Silent House,” which has had a considerable success both in London and' New York, and has certain qualities that practically assure its success h,ere and in Australia. It is not the intention to present the new play during the coming season, but a little later the Moscoviteh Company will make a return tour through New Zealand with "The Silent House,”, commencing at Auckland. , “The Silent House.” said Mr. larker in the course of an interview, is a melodrama with lots of good comedy, much of which arises from the fact that the audience is in the secret of the plot, whilst the characters are not, rather reversing the usual order of such plays. Mr, Moscoviteh will be seen in a new

order of role, that of a villainous vninese doctor, who practises his hideous mysteries upon the innocent with a sang froid that is horribly fascinating. Mr. Parker’s visit to Wellington was a short one only, as he will leave for Sydney to-day in order to produce The Patsy,” a domestic comedy which has had a good run in America and has to do with the ways of the wife and two daughters of a commercial traveller, who only lands home now and again. ' The wife and the eldest daughter, whojare sublimely selfish, contrive to make Patsy’s life a little hell, and nearly succeed in- doing so, but Patsy wins out in the end, as virtue always does. . Mr. Parker says that the firm has imported a new and very clever American actress in Miss Irene Homer to play this part, and judging by her record in New York she should do very well both in The Patsy” and other plays. This play is due for production in Sydney on July . “Of course you know that Leon Gordon, of ‘White Cargo’ fame, is back in Australia,” said Mr. Parker. “He has been figuring in ‘The Trial •of Mary Dugan,’ a play the whole action of which takes place in a criminal law court. There is a very fine atmosphere of suspense about the trial of Mary Dugan for murder, and in Melbourne the play ran for many weeks. It will be coming over to New Zealand in due course.’ “The Ben Travers comedies, ‘Rookery Nook.’ ‘Cuckoo in the Nest,’ and ‘Thark,’ have enjoyed a very pronounced success. That company was to. have come to New Zealand at Easter, ibut the business being done was so good that it precluded that arrangement. They are to come to New Zealand within a few weeks, I understand,” said Mr. Parker. “A new musical comedy, ‘Princess Charming,’ from the London Palace, with a new actress, Miss Kathryn Preece, is to be presented at Sydney on Saturday next. In the. London cast of tips comedy were Delysia, George Grossmith, Stanley Lupini, and Evelyn Laye. Miss Preece .is said to have the advantage of a particularly fine voice, and has, I believe,/ appeared in grand opera in America..-- , “The Boucicaults have made a > conspicuous, success in F. K. Lonsdale s comedy. ‘The High Road,’ which I think is the best-acted and best-produced play I have ever seen in Australia, which is saying a very great deal. Muriel Starr has been scoring successes, too, during her long season at the Sydney Palace, ■where ‘The Donovan Affair’ and Cor-

iiered’ have been great successes. “Crowning all. however, Mr. Parker continued, 4 ‘has been the success of Miss Margaret Bannerman, the distinguished English actress and beauty, who made her debut on Saturday week in the new comedy theatre the Williamson firm have built in Exhibition Street, Melbourne, opposite His Majesty’s Theatre. . This is the most modern theatre of the intimate type I have seen. It is very broad and shallow;: that is to say, every seat in the house is on terms of intimacy with the stage and the people on it. Miss Bannerman was just the right person, and Somerset Maugham’s comedy, Our Betters,’- the right play for the theatre. This was the play in which she made hn enormous hit in London, and it looks ns though she is going to repeat it in Melbourne.” _____