SANFORD'S AMERICAN FLAYERS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 7871, 5 January 1904, Page 2

SANFORD'S AMERICAN FLAYERS.

This company is due at the Opera House on Thursday evening, when "The Power of Gold" will be staged. This stirring play is essentially a drama of the English type; an elaborate scenic spectacle replete with startling climaxes, decorous yet hearty humour* and seasoned with a modicum of villainy .^ The play requires a great profusion of scenery for its proper showing, and Mr Sanford em- j ployed such masters of the brush as John 1 ifoung and Harley Merry in this department ; each massive set tests the capacity of the largest stages. Realism plays an important part mr the production, as is seen in the climax of the first act, when the villain escapes in the genuine hansom c»u, drawn by a thorpuenbred English hackney. The scene of the drama is laid in London, and it tells a story of strange dramatic and romantic interest, depicting the gold and utter helplessness of poverty 5 it blends the lives of aristocracy and pauperism; it takes the auditor from the gorgeous mansions* of the rich to the squalid and noisome slums among the city's poor. Opposed to this is shown the grasping greed for gold among the opulent and proud; it tells the story of an humble, happy home, housing love and honesty; Mended to this pretty domestic picture is the well-whispered tale ' of blood and robbery. The play is well supplied with startling yet legitimately sensational situations, such as the abduction in the first act; the meeting of the silkrobed adventuress with her thieving and besotted husband in the second; the exciting escape from the lunatic asylum in the third; the murder at the deserted toll-house, and final tying of threads in the last act. The scenery is realistic in tho extreme, and the cast includes some of the' best-known performers from the American boards.