DRAMATICS

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7062, 23 January 1933, Page 9

DRAMATICS

Matheson Lang lias acquired a play on tho subject of the Euko of Wellington He will produce it in London in the spring. <&> <l> ♦ The Ella Shields-Georgc Wallace revue and vaudeville company will open the Wellington season on January 28. <f> <s> <£ $ According to the latest advice from tho Williamson lirm, tho Sybil Thorndike company will now appear at the Opera House on Thursday, February 2. "St Joan” will bo played. ~ <J> <5- <S> Damo Thorndike told tho Canterbury Repertory Society something about the amateur movement in England. "Today thero da hardly a village in England without some form of dramatic expression,” sho said, "but nearly everywhere I go I find a stodgincss, a limit prescribed to the stuff they ought to do, and a tendency to copy professionals in a mild way. Amateurs used to dig out ahead; they are perhaps without money—but economy produces inventions! Tho professional theatre cannot do advanced work becauso of necessity; it must, pander to draw tho stalls. So it should be tho amateurs I who experiment and who hold a stan- ! dard to us. Have your branch pushing !ahead fifty years, instead of staying thirty years behind!”

By “JACK POINT" w

Vladimir do Pachmann, the queer old man who would leave off in the middle of playing his beloved Chopin to toll his audience, in his broken English, some thought that had just occurred to him, has just died in Rome, aged 84. Ho was Russian by birth, and had been on the concert platform for over GO vears. •s><s><s><?>

Vladimir do Pachmann’s most important teacher was himself. His father, a professor of Roman Law at Odessa University, taught him tho violin, but tho boy preferred the piano, and of tho piano his father knew next to nothing. So young Vladimir bought huge piles of music—everything ho could lay hands on—and plougliod through them with such perseverance and acumen that when ho went to his first master, Dachs, at the age of 18, lie could play any of Bach's Forty-eight Fugues from memory in any key, and had besides an encyclopaedic repertoire. Liszt, who attended Do Pachmann’s first recital, declared that the voung man played Chopin bettor than Chopin himself did. When well over 70 Dc Pachmann decided that his playing was all wrong in principle, and completely revised his method. Until near the end he practised every day for from four to ten hours.

Paul Robeson, the famous negro actor-singer, is planning to start a repertory company at a Yiest End theatre in the early spring. He will appear in a variety of plays, song recitals and concerts. Plays like “The Hairy Ape” and “Emperor Jones,” ■will be performed, and Robeson has three new plays in view. One is called “'Big Boy,” which is about a negrd prizefighter, and another is based on a short story by Puskin, tho Russian writer. Robeson will have the support of first-class English players. Already ho has had offers to take such a company for a tour of tho capitals of Europe. <S> <s> <s> <s• “The Cathedral,” a play in three acts, by Hugh Walpole, adapted from his novel of tho same name, was produced in London recently. The story of “Tho Cathedral” is one of the oldest and most moving in the world. The talo of a great man falling, of disaster following pride, is a themo whose magnificence was realised beforo even the early Greek drama had run its course. Some of tho best things in tho novel naturally do not appear in the stage version,” writes a London critic. * But these losses arc inevitable when a long novel is transferred to the three-hours traffic of the stage. The important thing is that this play is not merely a lifeless adaptation. In its force and vigour it seems like an original work issuing freshly from its author’s thought. At times Mr Walpole shows the novelist’s influence over tho playwright in making his characters talk a little too much. But once the effective dramatic, moment is reached his dialogue becomes spare and taut. His prolixity only delays, it docs not smother, his climaxes.”

The Bulletin says of the revival of “Our Miss Gibbs” at Her Majesty’s, Sydney: —The principal excuse for the revival of ‘‘Our Miss Gibbs” tvas provided by the evident delight with which the piece was received by the voung folk. It came to them as freshly as it did to tho generation that applauded the first performances.. Another good reason for revamping the triflo is that tho Firm has practically an ideal cast for it. Gus Bluett and Tyco Franklyn, both accomplished extempore comedians, infuse life into the libretto between the lines, as it were, and tho ornamental parts of Hughio Pierrepont and Mary Gibbs arc embellished by the dancing. of Cyril Ritehard and Madge Elliott. The music, which is of fftir average quality Monckton-Caryll calibre, makes no exigeant demands on anyone's vocal powers, and pretty dresses and appropriate scenery complete the recipe for a workmanlike production. Saturday night’s performance went through in the happy-family atmosphere characteristic of Sydney first nights. Every member of the company seemed to have about five hundred personal friends in front, all imbued with wild enthusiasm, and the play was pushed into the background timo after time while comedian or soubrette acknowledged an ovation a breach of stage conventions that the recent opera season had done much to propagate.

Marie, who recently was married for the second time, came to Australia from London as a vaudevillo cntcrtahier. While she was appearing at the Tivoli, Sydney, a lead was wanted in a hurry for tho comedy with music, -The Cousin from Nowhere,” which had been running in tho New South Wales capital for about a fortnight. With much publicity, a shopgirl with a nice voice, but with no stage experience had been given tho rather difficult part, but was obviously overweighted among clover professionals such as Floie Allen and Claude Flemminm So Mario Burke was suddenly thought of—but no less than tbc famous 0. B. Cochran had had her in his great London show, “Afgar”—and Marie played and, of course, triumphed. She next starred in Australia in “Wildflower,” “Ivatja the Dancer," and “Frasquita." New Zealand had her in all those shows, and Australia and Now Zealand theatregoers would like to have had her stay longer. Miss Burke, who has literary ability also—she has written short stories for London magazines—vrus formerly married to Tom Burke, the well-known' operatic tenor, and Guv King, her second husband, who was born in Hastings, Hawke’s Bay, has also been married before. After she returned to England from Australia, Marie appeared at Drury Lane with outstanding success. Later she played in a West End revival of “The Student Prince,” and later still was the star of that great London romantic spectacle, “Waltzes from Vienna,” which Melbourne theatregoers aro now flocking to see. Her latest part was something different —principal boy in pantomime at Manchester. <» <s><s•«> Florence Austral, tho world’s greatest dramatic soprano, contemplated bringing the Covent Garden Opera Company to the Commonwealth, this year. The Austral company will be different from tho two other operatic organisations to be heard in Australia this year, inasmuch as it will sing German opera in English. Sacha Guiltry, the famous French actor-manager, has had a season in London under the direction of C. B. Cochran. It is three years since M. Guitry last played in London; this was tho first occasion'on which he did not share the stage honours in London witn his brilliant wife, Yvonne Printemps. M. Guitry, who has the distinction of having appeared in eighty-three of his own plays during tho thirty years of his stage career, recently concluded a lecture tour in France, preaching against films. <S> «> <s> •» A London thcatrogoer writes: “One lovclv stage picturo follows hard on the heels of the last in ‘Wild Violets, the new musical play at Drury Lane. Tho grouping, the colour-designs, the soft footlightless lighting, are a constant joy, and as for the revolving stage . .". ! Mere revolving is a trifle for it. It advances, it recedes, it practically sits up and begs—and in the finale, it presents us with a real, livo skating rink, with skaters performing on artificial ice. . . . But the story is dreadfully slender. Even a musical comedv ought to contain more incident than ono elopement from a girls’ school in 1902, even when that happens in Switzerland. . . . Herr Robert Stolz’s music is a feast of ricbly scored melodics, which arc really well sung. The two hits of the evening were made by Adclo Dixon and Charlotte Greenwood, tho American stage and film actress. Miss Dixon’s vivacity as a schoolgirl is delightfully fresh and unforced. She can sing and she can act. Miss Greenwood is six feet of personality, a kino of American cross between ViOiCt Lorainc and Nellie Wallace.”

In a short talk at Christchurch tho other day, Lewis Casson referred to the old tradition of bringing realistic effects to the stage. “This tendency has been carried out continually,” ho said. “We are now seeing results. As the speech of real life has become more and more dull—we move our lips and jaws even less than the hist genera-tion-then in tho relation of the. stage to real life, the speech is becoming a mumble! To-day modern plays arc no use in a theatro holding more than eight hundred people; they lose their artistry in a larger place.” The theatre must reverse this; it must depart from the Tealistie if the speech of life were so dull that one must mumble it; and it must strive for the speech to fill a large theatre. People were getting used to tho realistic in acting; m present times the movement of an cj ebrow was of vital importance. And so the talkie machines, which required slightly less action than real life to reproduce effectively, influenced such feeling which could not understand tne conventions of real acting. All one could do was to make sure that the speech in itself was beautiful; a quiet voico could bo made to tell if enormous troublo were taken over phrasing and the tunes to which one spoke. It. was the tendency of all actors, amateur or professional, Mr. Casson concluded, to level out their speech; but the mere fact that an actor was thinking clearly was not sufficient unless the speee.i were translated definitely and clearly as well.