MARY ANDERSONS AUSTRALIAN ENGAGEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8035, 24 August 1887, Page 5

MARY ANDERSONS AUSTRALIAN ENGAGEMENT.

A London correspondent writee :—"Mr. Musgrore has succeeded in coming to terms with Mr. Abbey on behalf of Miss Mary Anderson, who is to definitely visit the colonies in June next year, playing a fifteen weeks' engagement in the chief cities under Messrs. Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove. She is really under a contract with Mr. Abbey for a tour of the world. She will leave San Francisco in May for Australian shores, accompanied by a ' leading man , — probably Mr. Forbes Robertson, who values hie services at £80 a week—a stage manager, and secretary. The whole of the stage costumes which Mr, Abbey provided for Miss Anderson's memorable Lyceum season will be taken to Australia. I may mention, in order to give some idea Of the expense of the accessories of a Lyceum production, that the cost of the costumes for Miss Mary Anderson's ' Romeo and Juliet' amounted to £4,000. To an outsider this engagement of the favourite American actress for tho colonies seems like a desire on the part of the managers to achieve j?m%e rather than pecuniary reward. Nor can one see how it will result in anything but a loss unless tho prices of admission are raised, and even then the attendances must be large to leave any legitimate margin of profit on the speculation. Miss Mary Anderson has, in fact, just completed a provincial tour in England, the average weekly receipts of which have amounted to some £I,SOO~. This is with a minimum of travelling; for a tour in Great Britain, owing to its limited area, its enormous cities, and its network of railways, is a very different thing from a journey to the antipodes, at the end of which, thousands of miles have to be traversed in order to play in the few chief centres of population of Australia and New Zealand. It is, after all, the old story of Charles Dickens, whose answer to the alluring offer of Spiers and Pond to visit the colonies was that he could make a better night's average by packing up his dress clothes any day and taking the train for Liverpool or Manchester."