SYBIL THORNDIKE.

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 149, 21 December 1932, Page 11

SYBIL THORNDIKE.

Commencing next Satnrday night- »t'the Grand Opera House, under J.. C. Williamson Limited, management, by arrangement with tha Cherniavsky Bureau, London, Dame' -Sybil Thorndlke will play to Wellington audiences at the opening of her New Zealand- tour Bernard Shaw's provocative play, "Saint Joan." Dama Thorndlke played the part of Joan "when the play was first presented.to London: audiences in 1924. Mating her first tour of the Southern Hemisphere, Dame Thorndike created a furors in Australia.- In: New-Zealand-she will-pre-sent plays selected from among* those which have made her world-famous.-.' She will ba supported by a specially selected company from London. The producer of the play Is her husband, Mr. Lewis \ Casson,: The. story-of. the "Maid of Orleans," who drove the English out of Franca in the fifteenth century, is well known, but Bernard Shaw in his play, has dealt with it in a most original way. "Kama Sybil is the embodiment of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, and her-Maid of Orleans must be accepted as the expression of his ■ Ideas: As Shaw explains in his preface to the play, he has drawn Joan as a peasant girt of- simpla character, full of downright common-sense, who claims that supernatural "voices" dictate the course she is to follow, yet at every stage can Blvo excellent worldly, reasons for her actions. Dame Sybil's acting of the part Impressed Australian audiences with the spontaneity of every detail in her reading of.the part. The gestures had an authentic flavour of the country The voice was clear, eager, compelling, ■■' yet tempered by an essential gentleness. -One felt the sturdiness of Joan, but ane felt her grace and pathos too. Mr. Lewis Casson taade a. magnificently sombre and intensive study of Peter Cauehon, Bishop of Beawals. The other characters were to the life." The company will also play during the short Wellington season "Captain Brassbound's Conversion * iffis^'BoiSSK plays Nap" •*» i**.