“KILLED” BY LAUGHTER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17954, 5 December 1932, Page 9

“KILLED” BY LAUGHTER

TRAGEDY'S SHORT RUN PRODUCER’S LAWSUIT BERLIN, Oct. 24. A play which seems to be the funniest tihgedy ever written was the subject oi a lawsuit before a Berlin Court to-day. Intended to "be an earnest and melancholy piece, it was produced in August at a theatre in Filter den Linden, where it was received with hilarious mirth, from the audience until, at the tragic •denouement in the last act, the well-known actor who played the leading part himself broke info loud laughter.

'One person did not join in the prevailing mirth-the producer; and he today sued the actor concerned for 1600 marks damages, alleging that his illtime mirth ; lone had caused the play’s first night to be also its last. The defendant urged that the play was not killed by him but was already dead, and produced newspaper criticisms which raised in Court an echo of the first night’s merriment. The Bench, accepting liis version, dismissed tho case and awarded costs against the plaintiff, who, it is understood, does not yet see. the joke.

At a performance of the opera “Salome” at FUierfeld’ on Saturday the audience, by nay of contrast, actually dissolved in tears. These were not caused by events on the stage, however, but by tear-gas introduced, it is supposed, by race-conscious Nazis in protest against the appearance of a singer from the Philippines in the name part.