WOMAN PRODUCER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21698, 13 January 1934, Page 10 (Supplement)

WOMAN PRODUCER

LONDON THEATRE VENTURE FEMININE INFLUENCE ON STAGE Many hopes attend the arrival of Miss Rita John as the first woman to be sole presenter of a full-fledged West End revue in " Yours Sincerely." This is by no means the only sign at the moment of the distaff side s new importance in the control of our lighter musical stage, an English critic writes. It is to be remembered that Miss John's responsibility for "Jolly Roger —so far, at any rate, as the Savoy and Lyceum were concerned—was - very expressly shared by Mr. George Robey. So with earlier women managers of mirth. Nearly all of them had either masculine support or just carried on a tradition. The Swanboroughs at the old Strand were a family party. It. was in conjunction with her late husband that Miss Violet Melnotte, the doyenne of living manageresses, permitted the present Duke of York's to be the home of suchfroUcsas " Mam'selle Nitouche, Go Bang and " The Gay Parisienne The nearest thing we have had lately to Miss John's venture was After Dinner, the Gaiety production which Miss Gwen Farrar " devised " just a year ago. As it happens, the Gaiety itself has now a woman-manager in Miss Frances Doble. But "Ballerina for all its colourful interludes of -ballet and, of masque is hardly to be described as on the frivolous plane. Otherwise it is noticeable that the tale of actressmanagers in strong, emotional drama has been dwindling. Both Dame bybil Thorndike and Miss Gladys. Cooper are appearing under the auspices of Mr. Gilbert Miller. Miss Nancy Price and Miss Lilian Baylis splendidly . uphold the banner of popular but ntamly serious dramatic endeavour. The ress-manager, however, with the old concentration of glamour and authority in one personality, is becoming as rare a being as -the actor-manager himself. What effect the feminine touch will reveal in " Yours Sincerely " remains to be seen. If the revue has anything like the charm and gaiety and genuine beautv that surrounded Mr. George Robev's robust humour in " Jolly Roger," all should be very well. Whether Miss John's example is widely followed or no, it coincides with the fact that modern musical productions of a lighter order have nowadays to please audiences containing at least twice as large a proportion of welleducated women as used to attend the burlesques and comic-operas of the days before musical comedy—not counting, of course, the Savoy, which expressly invited " the girl of 16." In this very season the matinees of musical and other light-hearted " shows " have been so crowded that in a remarkable number of cases extra ones have become absolutely necessary and enormously successful. The. suburban woman, who comes up to the West End for shopping, lunch, and a matinee and returns to preside over the dinnertable, has constituted herself into a vast new public. It is a public which naturally demands a different kind of entertainment from the sort of thing that delighted the gilded youth and vieux marcheurs of aforetime. What will be the effect of this new public upon the kind of humour demanded? It is a question the future must answer. Will the too convivial glass and other masculine peccadilloes remain the staple themes? Or shall we switch off more to domestic and social satire? Or will humour itself give way to decorative fancy and sentiment? After all, we have it on Mrs. G'raigie's authority that feminine humour is a contradiction in terms. " Woman's life," she held, "is a tragedy from the time when she disappoints her mother by not being a boy."