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New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4824, 29 November 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

Mr Henry Lee’s illness after the first night of “Cyrano de Bergerac’’ proved more serious i-lian was at first anticipated. Mr Duggan took his plane, but as there was no chance of Mr Lee coming back quickly, and the untoward events bad injured the prospects of ultimate success, Mr ■ Anderson put "The Worst Woman in London” hurriedly into rehearsal, and Miss Eugenio Duggan, hy one of those rapid transitions to which actresses arc liable, found herself suddenly transformed from Boxane, the best woman in,Louis’ gailant France, into "the worst” in King Edward’s modern London. It takes a good deal to entitle a woman to the last distinction, and though Frances Vcre is bad—well, we have heard of even worse. Still, the aulhoi, Mr Walter Melville, does make his heroine a woman rather unsuited io the domesticities murder, and slander, plot and intrigue are to her pastimes. Ev-i'.v act is p-acked with sensation, ana though there is no special coherence of plot, the sensations are so varied and startling that -they keep the audieuce on the qui vive. In one scene the heroine escapes roasting at the hands of the "worst" woman by sliding down a telephone wire. Miss Duggan appears as Frances Vere, Miss Burdette as her opposite, the virtuous Buth, Mr Harry Plimmer as the hero. Jack. Felton, Mr H. W. Diver as Vincent Doyle, an adventurer, Mr G. P. Carey, as • Hugh Drayton, a dipsomaniac. Others-in the east are:—Messrs Edmund Duggan, Frank Cro=s!ey, Albert Lucas, Waiter Dalgieish. Hans Phillips, H. B. Bussell, Piank Bossmorc. Milton Moss. Walter Carle, Harry Wilton, Eobert Stone, frank Lacey, Miss Georgie Leighford, Miss Marion Buckley, Miss Beatrice ITarnea, Miss and Lily JTravers.