GREY LITTLE THEATRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 September 1946, Page 2

GREY LITTLE THEATRE

“LADIES IN RETIREMENT” READ Last evening, in the Lyceum Hall, the Greymouth Little Theatre read “Ladies in Retirement,” a three-act murder play by Edward ’ Percy and Reginald Denham. With somewhat intriguing effect, the authors dedicate this play to the memory of the French prototypes who wrote it with their lives. The scene is set, however, not in France but in the living-room of an old pre-Tudor farmhouse situated in the Thames marshes. The owner is Miss Leohora Fiske, an ex-lady of the chorus, who •lived upon the allowances made her by those gentlemen who paid tribute to her beauty in her youth. Her companion, Miss Ellen Creed, invites her two simple minded sisters down for a visit. Miss Fiske is disinclined to have these two crazy women upset her comfortable existence and wotild have them go, but Miss Creed wills otherwise and it is Miss Fiske who departs—throttled by her companion and then bricked up in an old bake oven. The crime is-discovered and reenacted with startling clarity by a petty thief and the maid, and it is to the police who are searching for the thief that the murderess surrenders herself,, leaving her crazy sisters to enjoy the solitude of the lonely old house. The reading on October 1, which will be the final one for the year, will comprise three one-act plays—- “ Legend,” “The Complete Lover,” and “-Down bfi FSrih,”