“THE FAKE.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 296, 12 November 1934, Page 8

“THE FAKE.”

It is not often that a play of the calibre of “The Fake” is attempted in amateur dramatic circles. Highly sensational plays with tense situations and heavy dramatic acting, even though they caricature a modern tendency and tend to arrest degeneracy by focussing the spotlight of public opinion on a particular “dead spot,” are not usually regarded as being capable of interpretation by amateurs. It says much, therefore, for local talent when a play such as “The Fake,” by Frederick Lonsdale, can be produced by the Palmerston North Society. A capable team of players has been welded into a strong combination by Mr Fred Cousins (producer) and it is stated by competent critics that this is Mr Cousins’s masterpiece, surpassing even “Interference.” The play, which is in three acts, is sot in modern surroundings and in the first scene the characters are introduced and Mavis Stanton receives the congratulations of the guests at her wedding feast on the occasion of her marriage to Hon. Gorrard Pillick. Act 2 shows the suffering Mavis has undergone during five years of mental torture and physical fear owing to her husband’s derangement of mind duo to his drug habits. How Geoffrey Sands manages to inveigle Pillick into a seaside jaunt and contrives to arrange that bo does not return is well and cleverly portrayed. Those taking part include: Miss Betty Mcßae (Mavis Stanton), Mrs D. J. Davies (Mrs Stanton), Miss Gwen Gibbs (Mrs Hcsketh Pointer), Misses B. Ross and B. Rodgers, Messrs C. Rabonc (Edward Stanton M.P.), M. H. Oram (Geoffrey Sands), N. Ellison (Hon. G. Pdlick), E. G. Seeker (Clifford Horn); E. G. Spraggon (Hcsketh Pointer) and 11. Driver. The play opens at the Opera House on Thursday evening next, the 15th inst., for a three-nights season. .The box plan’ will open at the Central Booking Office to-morrow morning at 10 o’clock.