DRAMA AS CHRISTMAS TREAT

Evening Star, Issue 17850, 22 December 1921, Page 6

DRAMA AS CHRISTMAS TREAT

Fuller patrons will have na vaudeville to entertain them over the Christmas week, but instead the strong meats of drama will be offered at the Princess Theatre, with the special allure of vaudeville’s idol —the Rev_ Frank Gorman—heading the special dramatic company chosen by the Fullers to support him in a series of dramas that have not only the qualities of powerful ami moving poiguauco inherent in good drama, but winch contain also a definite moral truth, which the popular parspn presses home with that vividness which made him so popular in lighter vein. Tiro piece chosen lor the opening of the season on .Saturday afternoon and evening is Maxwell Gray's famous storv 1 The Silence of Dean Maitland.’ This is a really stupendous drama, with some tremendous scenes and some wonderfully varied characters. It is no common melodrama with all the characters divisible into definite and distinguishable categories of good people and bad people. It emblazons rather the perennial truth that good and bad are mixed in all men, and that the sufferings of men are not always proportionate to their sins. But there is no need to narrate at this stage the story of Cyril Maitland’s sinful silence ,and the sorrow it brought on all who loved him. The book and the play ore well-known. Suffice it to say that Mr Gorman has been acclaimed an ideal Cyril Maitland run! an actor of rare potver and discretion. Ho is, moreover, supported by a company of great strength. During the children’s Christmas fete scene patrons will have the opportunity of hearing him sing two appropriate songs—* The Wedding Song ’ and ‘ Absent.’ Twenty children arc engaged in this scene. The. plans for the opening matinee and evening performance, and for the week during which the play will be staged, are at The Bristol. Later productions will he [/The Saint and the Sinner,’ ‘ The Poor Man’s Parson/ and * Her Unborn Child/-