SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 67

SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS.

Problem 2607 (By R. Boswell).—Arises i* Game 6367, at the 66th move—Block: 20, 26, kings -30, 26. White: 19, 32, kings 15, lft Black to play and draw.

Drawn. We would direct readerr to the play appearing above under Notes and Criticisms.

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commendation by the Audience. The trains- i formation scene was charming, but the concluding, -harlequinade -obul'd • have been omitted with advantage. "Johnny" Sheridan " is exceedingly , popular with Masterton people, and ; is always sure of a cordial greeting. — Sincerely yours/ Fka Diavolo. jtfasfcerton, August 26. « ' ' Dear Pasquin,— Mies Irene Aihsley, the young New Zealand contralto, arrived in Auckland by the s.s.-Moana, and gave two concerts «t the Choral Hall on Thursday and Friday, August 20 and 21. On both occasions the hall was packed to the doors ; all Auckland's elete thronged to bid the young singer welcome. Mass Ainsley is undoubtedly a singer who will rank amongst t le leading singers of tho world, and thi6 within a jew years. Frank Thornton is packing H.M.~Theatre, and Fuller ditto at the Opera House. — Yours truly, W. Jamieson. The recent theatrical season in New York forms the subject of a lively article by Matthew White, jun., in Munsey's for July. "Irene Wycherley," it seems, failed across the Atlantio to enjoy its London prosperity. All that New York saw of Shakespeare was a few, Saturday night performances of "Hamlet" by Mr Sothern, and a fortnight of a comparatively unknown actor named Henry Ludlowe in "The Merchant of Venice" and "Richard III." "John Glayde's Honour" (lately produced in Melbourne by the Kingston-Brough Company) ran for a fortnight. " Its big hit in London, where it ran for months at George Alexander's theatre, did not," says Mr White, "make New York accept the disagreeable family relation embodied in the plot." As the heroine in 10 y Wife" Miss Billie Burke at once gained the favour of American playgoers. The only hit of the season for British-made . <Irama was with Mr Charles R. Kennedy's , play, "The Servant in the House." Paoked houses have, all along been the rule for . "The Merry Widow," which is still being piayed at the New Amsterdam Theatre, and will run on until Christmas. In variety the event of the year has been Snaip's turn at the Hippodrome.— "a truly wonderful trick with a piano, played by the performer while apparently seated on nothing, himself and the instrument meanwhile whirling around at lightning speed." Speaking generally, Mr White declares that "New York audiences are not partial to spoken verse at the playhouse," that they welcomed a ohange from "the overwrought emotion and banal chit-chat of certain modern examples of play-writing," and that it was "straying from the beaten path, not hugging it close, that brought fame and royalties to the playwright who won" during the season. Kyrle Bellew had a funny experience in Kansas City. One week his throat became very painful, ahd, tea-ring to lose his . voice, he obtained aIL. sorts of remedies, until Mi Bellew's dressing table- in hie xoom at the hotel looked Tike a veritable chemist's shop. One day he heard a tap at his door. He called out, " Come in J" and a young and pretty girl appeared on tho threshold with a broom in her hand. She did not speak, but regarded him shyly. 'The actor imagined that she had come to beg seats for the play, but when he noted her fluffy, very light hair he felt sure that she was an aspirant -to fame on the boards. At length he asked her what he could do for her. She pressed her hand "to her 6ide, and faltered out that she felt sick, and that when she touched her side like that it hurt very much. Bellew wisely remarked that she therefore should not touch her «Ide. The' girl smiled, twit again remained silent. At last he realised that it was a. case of mistaken identity; so he quesfoned her as to whom she thought he was. ' he girl replied: "I expect you are the • actor; you have such a lot of funny jottle3 of stuff and instruments on your i 'ble!" Bellew laughed heartily, and prc«onted her with two tickets, saying ho i -ought that might work an effective cuie, j-tvd itdid, for two days after his visitor ap-j-pared again with a broom in her hand. " I am all right now, sir," she trium].Viantly exclaimed. "I «a\v a real doctor, lut your stuff" — meaning- the play — "did mo much more good than his," and 6he r? treated blushingly. But for hie stage "thunder" John Dennis, a London playwright and dramatic critic of the beginning of the eighteenth century, would have been long since forgotten. Dennis wrote nine pieces, all of which save one were failures. " This author," says Dibdin, "liveiJ in a_ state of warfare with all mankind, and in particular with the poets. Addison, Steele, and even Pope would have been friendly to Dennis had Hot the latter made such a course by his conduct toward them impossible. In 1709 Dennis brought out at the old Drury Lane Theatre a tragedy which he named* "Appius and Virginia." The only good thing about the piece was "a new kind of stage thunder," which Denni3 invented for tho " occasion. According to Pope, who has a. line in the "Dunciad 1 " — "With thunder rumbling from the mustard 1 bowl" — the old ways of making thunder and mustard were the- same. But since it is more advantageously performed by troughs of wood with stops in them; it is not dear, however, tnat the new method was that which was devised by Dennis. "Appius and Virginia" proved a dismal failure, and the doleful tragedy was soon withdrawn. On some evening subsequent to the retirement of " Appius and Virginia" the Drury Lane company was playing Shakespeare's

tragedy of "Macbeth." Dennis wa* present in the audience, and the unfortunate dramatiat plainly recognised his "own thunder" in the storm scenes. He jumped to his feet and shouted, "There, gentlemen > there's a set of rascals for you. They get my piay damned, and then they steal my thunder!" According to a Detroit newspaper, Miss Olga Nethersole is to produce in New York,' towards the .end of the summer, a wonderful love tragedy, in which the actress will play the part of a woman who in real earnest falls madly in love with a man, and 1 signifies the same, so to speak, by strangling him on his wedding night — that is, on the night she has trapped him from his brand-new bride by a message falsely declaring his favourite sister (an anarchist) to be in danger of her life. Miss Nethersole's part is said to be "a somewhat emotional one." So one might have imagined. Mies Nethersole used to be rath-ar fascinated by mad people some yeaTS ago, and would often visit lunatic asylums foi what she called "impressions of veiled sanity of a, high and spiritual order." Probably this morbidity of taste may be accounted for in the fact that the very first audience Miss Nethersole acted before was an audience of mad 1 people. It was at Cblney Hatch, and the experience was not by any means a pleasant one; for when the young actress (she was only 12 at the €Lme) made her appearance on the stage, a poor, mad creature at the back of the hall-^a woman who had once been beautiful— rose from her seat, and tried to make a dash for the front, screaming the while that Miss NetHersole washer own child. A trying moment for a " first appearance" ; but when the woman had been' quietened, the little actress struggled bravely for the voice which she thought at first had been frozen up .within her, and, fmdinig it, gave' a highly creditable account of her part in the play.

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