‘HORRORS FOR HEALTH’

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 187, 7 May 1934, Page 5

‘HORRORS FOR HEALTH’

Women Love Melodrama “I. really think that it is a sign of physical healthiness when people like to be thrilled horrifically. It is natural to appreciate ‘strong meat’ drama—because it is fare of a kind one "can get one’s teeth into.” The speakeer was Dame Sybil Thorndike, says a correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” to whom I talked on the subject of The Triumph of the Hon-est-to-Goodness Melodrama—following 'her literary terrific performance in “Double Door,” which opened at the 'Globe Theatre on Wednesday night. I had expected to find Dame Sybil tired out after her wearing performance. But, instead, I found her brimful of energy, and delighted nt the definite manner in which, to judge bv the first-night reception, the full-blooded ■school of drama has come back into Its own. “I have always been an unashamed devotee of good, honest melodrama,” Dame Sybil told me. “I do not mean 'that there should not. be variety on the stage, but you cannot have reni variety unless genuine melodrama is represented along with the rest. Audiences want to be given a dose of the horrors —the men, at all events. 'Uhey may not realise it, but they do. “It is just a sign of a vigorous, healthy outlook on life—and I am speaking now as a playgoer myself, not merely as an actress.”