MISS MARIE TEMPEST.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLII, Issue 1729, 3 February 1921, Page 5

MISS MARIE TEMPEST.

BIG RECEPTION LAST NIGHT. Miss Marie Tempest and her talented company delighted a large audience at the Opera House last night with the first production of their Palmerston season, "The Duke or Killie--rankie." The theme of the comedy is •omewhat unsubstantial, but it is embellished with ,such witty and subtle lialogue that, with distinguished interpretation, it becomes rare and momentous. Miss Marie Tempest's art is like an old vintage; matured and perfected, yet retaining its old fire with the passago of years. Her personality pervades and interweaves itself with the adventures of four egotists, immured in a Scottish castle, because the Duke of Killiecrankie, the greatest egotist of them all, sees in abducting his lady fair, the opportunity of extracting her consent to marry him. The predicament and unexpected situations of persons of widely diverging derivation under incarceration, and the dialogue they aford, are delicious. Miss Tempest has he intimate support of Mr Grahame Brown, a comedy actor of the first rank, with a genius for the portrayal of a character of quaint and eccentric susceptibilities. The remaining parts in an all important quartette are excellently presented by Mr Frank Harvey and Miss Dorothy Hamilton. The staging signalised a new departure: decoration of rare beauty and bewitching and varied hangings replaced the conventional scenery and it seemed, that the players enacted their parts at the centre of a mosaic. Under the directorship of Miss Nellie Black, the orchestration was of unusually high order. On Tuesday the company will present "Mary Goes First." _^^___^___