SUCCESSFUL LONDON PLAY.

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 21

SUCCESSFUL LONDON PLAY.

The plot of "Winter Sunshine," a play put on in London within recent months, is light and gay, dealing with the life on board a liner travelling to Australia, with a retired colonel among the passengers, whose intention it is to proceed to New Zealand to take up fruit farming. The author, Mr. G. A. Thomas, is well, known in Auckland for his descriptions of England broadcast from IYA, and for six one-act plays also presented from IYA. Mr. Thomas returned to England, his homeland, some three years ago with his New Zealand wife, formerly Miss Mary Holmes, of. Christchurch. The plot allows the colonel to advertise the Dominion well, besides expressing some of the amusing opinions of New Zealand held by a certain type of English people. The noted actress Athene Seyler (who was in Australia a few years ago with her husband, Nicholas Hannen, but did not get as far as New Zealand), played a dear old spinster, travelling continuously between London and Sydney, trying to make up her mind which she really prefers. As a matchmaker she also made much fun. Nicholas Hannen played a blind man with a desire for romance. When he steals a bracelet from the eagle-eyed spinster, his punishment is that he shall cut free from a silly young wife rejoining her husband in India, and transfer his attentions to a young woman on board with a broken heart. W. A. Darlington, the "Daily Telegraph" critic, described the play as being worthy of a high place on a list of plays he might make out for the spending of a pleasant evening. "Its people are natural, funny, and pleasant to meet," he said. The "Morning Post" predicted that' "Winter Sunshine" was going to be one of the big successes of the season, full as it was of sparkling wit, tenderness, and broad humanity, with all sorts of unusual touches of sentiment and at insight that- suggest another new author has arrived of something more than promise.