ALLAN WILKIE SEASON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17319, 20 May 1918, Page 3

ALLAN WILKIE SEASON

A full two years was the run of "Seven days' Leave," the thrilling submarine and spy play, in which the Messrs Fuller will reintroduce the English actor Allan Wilkio to Dunedin playgoers next Saturday evening. The play is full of sensation in its depictions of tho spy operations, and these sensations, which would have been dubbed incredible in pre-war days, have now the sanction of universal belief, there being no liarit to the outrages the Germans in England have planned and perpetrated. In the second place the stage depiction—especially of the rise of the submarine and its destruction—are on a scale never attempted upon the stage oven in the palmiest days of melodrama. The story is full "of humanity, with a warm glow of tender sentiment to mellow its sensation, and a happy leavening of comedy. In securing this successful drama for colonial production, the Fullers were more than fortunate in having an actor of Mr Allan Wilkie's calibre available to lend the distinction of his art to tho portrayal of the leading character. Dunedin playgoers have seen him in Shakespearean roles, and will find that 110 is a striking figure in the heroic part of Captain Terence Fielding. The scene of tho play is set in an English village, on tho East Coast of England, and the plot deals with the efforts of a couple of German spiofe—posing as Belgian refugees—to kidnap an English officer, home on seven days' leavo, and for the sake of certain to convey him to Germany in a submarine lurking in the harbour. Captain Fielding sees through tho disguises of the Germans, recognising them as two prominent Wilhelmstrasse spies, and throughout tho play it is movo for move between him and tho pair His posing and peculiar behaviour led' to a temporary estrangement between him and his fiancee, Lady Mary Heather, but in good time this is cleared away, and Lady Mary swims out and gives the false signal that brings the submarine to its doom. The box plans for the four nights' run of the piece will be opened at the Bristol on Wednesday morning.