RUTH DRAPER.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 26, 30 July 1938, Page 7

RUTH DRAPER.

A Supreme Artisi

After a season in Australia that can only be described as a series of brilliant triumphs, Ruth Draper, the remarkable American artist, arrived in Wellington today to commence a^ short local season. With practically no special scenery, costumes, or stage "props.," she represents every character in her- varied sketches, peopling the bare stage with figures that live in the imagination of the audience. There are no familiar standards by which one may measure the unique art of Ruth Draper. Describe her as a brilliant actress, and the description is quite inadequate. Call her performance a series of character sketches arid the definition is an absurd understatement. The nature of her art can be properly appreciated only by seeing her at work. and even so it is not to be understood— only marvelled at. There may be some people who say they cannot fancy themselves listening to a woman, reciting all night. But Miss Draper does not recite, and it is difficult to Helieve that she is only one woman. Without the aid of scenery or make-up, she stands alone and conjures up a score or more people—fascinating, stupid, loveable, or repugnant people—in turn. They crowd on to the stage, and are so real that the audience does not look at the solitary artist but at the imaginary characters whom she has created. One feels their invisible presence in the episode of the French dressmaker, in that crowded railway station on the Western plains, at the English gardenparty, in the American Court of Domestic Relations, or in that church in Italy. Miss Draper's art embraces character studies of people of every country and class; but she is probably never more captivating than when she is painting those life-size portraits, rather cynical, rather mocking, but so human, which represent such a happy cross-section of English city and country life.