COMEDY AND DRAMA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17439, 10 April 1931, Page 7

COMEDY AND DRAMA

COLLAPSE OF AN ACTRESS AUSTRALIAN AIR DISASTER MELBOURNE, April 2. While playing in Melbourne on Saturday night in “Sons o’ Guns,” Miss Bertha Rjecardo, whose husband/Clyde Hdod, was . one of the passengers in the Southern Cloud, collapsed. She was carried, hysterical, from the stage, but later went on again. • .-

Miss Riceardo is frantic with worry, and it was only because she wished to do something to occupy her mind that, she decided to appear again bn Friday night. At the aerodrome practically every day she has hhd little sleep during the last seven days, and on several occasions has broken down under the terrible strain of waiting for news that never comes. She was so exhausted .at. the final curtain last night that she had to be taken’ home. In the third act of the show Miss Riccardo says to Alfred Frith, the comedian: “I cannot find my Jimmy. You don’t know where he is, do you? Nobody knows where my Jimmy is.” Mr. Frith replies: “I don't know where your Jimmy is. I hope you never find him.’’

“It is a scene,” said Mr. Frith, “that is supposed to get a big laugh. I think that it is the most tragic thing I have ever heard on the stage. I always feel that I will not be able to ■reply to Miss Riccardo. I know just what she is thinking when she speaks her lines.”