MR OLLY DEERING

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 30

MR OLLY DEERING

(By “Lorgnette.”)

* Mr Oily Deering, whose genial face figures in our page of illustrations, is one of the best known and best liked comedians in this part of the world. He must, in fact, be reckoned as one of the old identities of the New Zealand stage, having first visited these shores in 1877, when he played with Miss Lizzie Morgan in “Our Nelly.” In the farcical comedy “The Lady of Ostend,” about to be produced here. Mr Deering has a part so congenial that it might have been specially written for him. The role is that of Mr Car bury, an elderly rubicund gentleman, who is fond of a night out, but who can only indulge in the luxury at rare intervals when he lias to use a considerable amount of duplicity to escape the vigilance of his wife, Matilda, who ultimately bowls him out in a fashion which creates a storm of laughter and applause. Of this clever impersonation the Melbourne “Argus’’ says:—“Mr Oily Deering, as Joseph Carbary, supplied some rich low comedy, exemplary in its restraint and freedom from anything like boisterousness. The performance owed a good deal to him.” As Bates, the butler, in Lumley’s comedy. “In the Soup,’’ and as Max Hirsch, the German barber, in “Tom, Dick, and Harry,” Mr Deering is equally successful, and lias received highly favourably press notices for bis capable and very diverting performances.