HISS SHEILA GALE

Evening Star, Issue 18021, 15 July 1922, Page 8

HISS SHEILA GALE

THE LASS FROM GALASHIELS. To suddenly step into a part which has been played for some time by a pronounced favorite and find favor with an audience grown used to that other’s interpretation is no easy matter; therefore the instantaneous success achieved by Miss Sheila Gale in the part of Teresa in ‘ Tho Maid of the Mountains’ shows her an artist Vorth watching (says the - Wellington ‘Times’). Miss Gale was. however, no stranger to tho part, having played it for two years in England, where she says it is still being revived during the spring and autumn tours, just as the Gilbert and Sullivan operas aro revived year by year. It was in these that Miss Sheila ’Gale served her apprenticeship, as it were, to the arduous profession she has chosen. She began as a concert singer, ■but this did not fulfil all her ambitions, and she joined Georg© Edwardes’s Comic Opera Company, and played in all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas during tho provincial tours, and also the Loudon season given two years ago. She describes these operas as *a magnificent training school, and many of the singers who are playing in them never desire to change. But nothing stands still: tho public desires something else, so Miss Gale followed the public taste and went into musical comedy, playing ‘ Dollar Princess,” and then for two years ‘The Maid of_ the Mountains/ before coming to Australia last February under engagement to the Williamson firm. Miss Gale bails from Glasgow, her native place being Galashiels (which she has taken in reverse syllables for her name), so that even our (at times) leaden sides, drizzling rain, and somewhat muddy stn#s do not depress her pearance she is English, with fair hair and fresh complexion, and there is just the faintest fascinating burr in her speech suggesting her birthplace, but otherwise she is of the world. That same burr has probably softened during her stage .life, for she’telle a story of a Scotsman in tho gallerv of a theatre in Glasgow, when she was playing in the ‘Dollar Princess’ (in jvhich she played a Russian Countess), announcing in a loud voice: “ Russian Countess! She’s no Russian; she’s just on© of ma ain countrywomen.” Like all the Scottish, Miss Gale is very clannish to her own, and wherever she has been she has found her countrymen ready to welcome her, the mere fact of her being a Scottish woman opening their hearts. She was entertained by the Caledonians in Sydney, and in Melbourne they are waiting to give her an equally warn welcome, while she herself is looking forward to meeting many Scotties when she reaches this city, the fame of Dunedin having already reached her ears.'