EMELIE POLINI

Evening Star, Issue 18334, 23 July 1923, Page 2

EMELIE POLINI

•MY LADY’S DRESS,’

The box plans for tlio J. C. Williamson’s Emelio Polini season will lie opened at The Bristol Piano Company’s 10-mor-row morning. The story of the opening play, ‘My Lady’s Dress,’ is as follows; The scene is first laid in a peasant’s house in Italy, where the hopes of human happiness depend upon a colony of silkworms, on the product of which Peo hopes to marry Nina, but Nina is vain and weak, and to gain a paltry kerchief, she flirts with Gioann, who, on finding that Nina is to “ go to the priest with Peo,” takes a devilish revenge by leaving the windows open, and so Tw'Jling the warmth - loving worms. . . . Stark misery marks the next scene—in Lyons, where, with a dying husband on her hands, Annette slaves at the loom trying to make impossible ends meet. Despairing at the quality of her work, she is temporarily aided by drunken Joanny, who is no end of a good weaver. . . . So much for the material, now for the trimming. In a dean Dutch garden, Antje (Anno again) confesses to her old nurse her loathing of the bridegroom selected for her by her imperious parent, and on the arrival of the latter lie is cajoled into allowing his daughter to test the man of his choice, a scented dandy from Amsterdam, “ with hands as sweet as musk.” How she bowls him out and turns him out forms a delicious little comedy sketch, too precious to narrate. . . . Next a drab room in a Whitechapel slum, with Annie, a plaintive, deformed maker of velvet flowers, with a wistful desire To bn and do as others, and sacrificing her one treasure, a magnificent head of hair, so that the beer may flow at her* sister’s . wedding. . . . Away up in the wilds of Siberia, Ivan, an intellectual ex-convict, has married Anna, a woman of the soil. She, the clod, docs not understand the man and his talk, and so turns to the earthly Louka for consolation —a tense Utile psychological drama, capitally acted. Having accounted for the si Ik, lace, flowers, and fur, the play revolves ’to the making. It is “ Jacqueline’s,” of Rond street, with a mannikin parade in full flare, with Anne noting the dresses and giddy old Sir Charles their wearers. Jacqueline is king, and lie rules his girl puppets with freakish cruelty. Sir Charles fancies one of the girls, and being a wealthy patron, one of the girls lis ordered to bo nice to the old roue, but sho rebels. There is a scene, in which Jacqueline shows his true colors, and is stabbed by tho outraged girl he would drive to ruin in order that his miserable business might flourish. . . - Then comes tho awakening—the dream is over. Anne sees the hollowness of her pretty artifices, and to John’s delight becomes her true sweet self, with belter grace, perhaps, as the telephone has informed her that she has duly landed the job for John.