STORY AND PICTURE

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 6

STORY AND PICTURE

PANTOMIME FOR CHILDHOOD

VIEWS OF A PRINCIPAL BOY.

Off the stage Miss Nora Delany, the., gallant Bobin Hood in the Williamson "Babes in the Wood" pantomime, produced .at the Grand Opera House this afternoon, is Lady Maxwell, wife of Sir William : Maxwell, the well-known English war correspondent' and journalist. Though, with her husband, she made a tour round the world,two1 years ago, she was unable to include New Zealand and Aiistralia in the itinerary, and consequently the pleasure is all the greater to-day for the waiting, to see the Dominion,' so far as her professional engagement permits. The way she expressed it, in an interview with a Post representative to-day, was that if she had to live outside England, with all her circle of friends there, there are two places she would think of first—New Zealand and British Columbia—and of the two she confesses to a predilection for this part of the Empire. The only thing wrong with it, she said, is that it is so far away, thus echoing the views of many travellers. She was delighted with the scenery from the train on the way down from Auckland, where the company has jusfc concluded a most successful season. Some of the scenes from, tlie carriage window reminded her much of Devd&shire, and though it is midwinter now, she likes the climate. A MATTER OF CLIMATE. As Nora Delaney Lady Maxwell has enjoyed great popularity for years past in musical comedy, vaudeville, and pantomime, and her view was sought on the difference between pantomimes in the Old Country and pantomime in j. Australasia. At Home the pantomime is a more or, less consecutive /story, based bn some nursery rhyme or fairy tale, and certain conventions are observed in the production. Though a medium for the introduction of the popular song, the 'cue is always in the book and the words and music fall naturally into place. The characters are also all in the piece. In Australasia.the pantomime is usually the setting for a galaxy Of artists to perform their various special turns, with a background and setting of. gorgeous scenery, effects, and costumes. The fairy tale is apt, like the babes, to be lost in the wood. Assuming such a proposition to be admitted,.which Miss Delaney was hardly prepared to allow to the extent described, the distinguished principal boy was disposed to put it down largely to the difference in cUmate and the environment of childhood. FAIRY TALES ON THE HEARTH.. In the Old Country, with ite long twilight and its winter evenings, on the .hearth before the fire the fairy tale and the nursery storj have a more real meaning to children than, they have here, especially in Australia and its brilliant sunshine, where the girls and boys are apt to become realists at a far earlier age than they'do in the misty Motherland. This makes the need for "sticking to the story" far less imperative here than it is in the Old Country, where the children would quickly miss and resent the absence of any familiar part of the tale. Lady Maxwell is a thorough believer in the fairy tale as a necessary part of the early education of every child. She regards the fairy story as the very nurse of the imagination, and quotes the old mythology of the Greeks and Romans to show how these things enter into the fibre of a race. She is collecting all the fairy lore she can of .Australia and New Zealand, including selections from the rich story of Maori and Polynesian mythology. After all, she says, the pantomime is for chil-dren-first, and foremost, and much more might be made of it as an -educative influence. What a brave figure in story, for instance, is made by Robin Hood, and she can figure him entering the scene in the forest on horseback; masked like a robber, at the head of his' men. She. herself is a great horsewoman, and in the hunting season in Birks; where she lives, she frequently follows ' the hounds. Her favourite pantomimes are "Cinderella" and "Dick Whittington," favourites also with most people for the excellence of their stories. As played in pantomime they have in them the capacity "to point a moral" as well as "adorn a tale." Perhaps, some day, the pantomime may be used like "Peter Pan" and "The Blue Bird," witn a very special eye to the chOdren.

■ The stay of Lady Maxwell in New Zealand will not be long. The pantomime season closes at Christchurch, and the principal boy of "Babes in the Wood" will return to England, via America, to play in London at the end of August. ' . X'