NEW PLAYS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19737, 13 March 1926, Page 12

NEW PLAYS.

MISS VANBRUGH’S RETURN A NEW ZEALANDER’S COMEDY. (Fhou Odb Own Coruespond .) LONDON, January 26. Miss Irene Vanbrugh returned to the London stage last night in a new play, -All the icing’s Horses,” by Mr C. B. Openshaw. “Three years,” says a well-known dramatic critic, “is not a long time lor most people to be away—lt is Indeed too short a time for many—but it is too long by exactly three years for Miss Vanbrugh, and I trust, now that she has returned to us, that she will settle down in London and not go galtrvanting about the remoter parts of the earth again. If Afrikanders and Australians wish to see her act, they must come Home and see her. The parent nation cannot always bo lavishing rich gifts on the children nations; it must be allowed to keep something for Itself. Per my part, I say that Australia and South Africa and Canada and New Zealand can have all we possess, provided they let us keep Irene Vanbrugh.” The author has written a conventional comedy. Miss Vanbrugh has the part of a wife-of a ponderous ass who Is everlastingly harping oh his dignity and his responsibilities. The man has ambitions; he would be a knight and member of Parliament and talk about “this grave crisis in the nation’s affairs.” He is always busy, even at homo, and so his family must keep a continual holy Sabbath while ho Is about. The result is that his wife Is profoundly bored by him, and has invented a deafness so that she may not have to listen to him; his children frankly dislike him. The boy wants to be an artist, and the girl wants to marry her father's secretary, Roger Elrington. "No,” says father. “Jack must come Into the business, and Jill must many my dear old friend. Sir Harry Vane, who can be so useful to me.” Mutiny among the children, which father attempts to quell by refusing to give Jack an allowance and sacking Elrington. HUMPTY DUMPTY'S FALL. So tar, Humpty Dumpty seems to he having it all his own way. Rut a Mrs Maunders appears upon the scene, and has a littlo chat with Mrs Everitt. Mrs Maunders, U turns out, was once a young person in Oxford and, as such, took the fancy, among others, of Wilfred, whom she called Willie. She had a daughter by Willie, and was duly provided for by a lump sum. But the lump sum has given out, and times are barfi, what with the rise in the cost of living and one thing and another! Then Alice Everitt decides to push Humpty Dumpty off the wall, and she does so with great vim and vigour! Given a certain level of competence—a level which the author attained without difficulty—the audience was evidently prepared to take the play very largely for granted and devote itself to giving a fitting welcome to a brilliant actress. It is not to be pretended that the part of Alice gave Miss A anbrugh any real opportunity of showing her finest powers. There is little in it tiiat she cannot do easily. But it gives her enough to remind us that she is back again, and that the London stage can never really be at its best without her. She is supported by an excellent company, who give us the impresseion of being in almost every case as good as their parts will allow them to be. MR K. BERKELEY’S NEW PLAY. “Mr Abdullah,” a farcical comedy, by Mr Reginald Berkeley author of "Eionch Leave,” was produced last night at the Gaiety Theatre, Hostings, before a crowded audience which included the Mayor and the Corporation The play was received with every sign of approval. The author has imagined Mr Abdullah, a personage alternately an Asiatic prince and a wooer of a chinning young lady, and his amorous adventures lead info a maze of a extremely funny predicaments. An American accent and a big cigar arc the main features of the first act, and the smoker is Mr Maurice Harvey, whose sellconsnonsncss as the secretary to t.ic prince provides most of the fun in the first act The second and third acts are crammed with a host of awkward predicaments and funny situations, which include a very charming love interlude.