STAGELAND

Southland Times, Issue 19598, 9 July 1925, Page 11

STAGELAND

OF PLAYS AND PLAYERS. (By “Playgoer.”) Mr Dion Boucicault, Miss Irene Vanbrugh, and the English members of their company, have left Sydney for London. Marie Tempest has produced “The Torch Bearers” in London, and is also playing in the lead. Graham Browne is also in the cast. It is hinted that efforts are being made to start an amateur dramatic society in Invercargill. In the new musical comedy company which African Theatres have sent out to (inter alia) play “Sally,” the piece which the Prince of Wales specially asked to have in Johannesburg on the occasion of his visit, is Doris Duane, who played here in “Scandal,” Cosmo Hamilton’s play. Irene Vanbrugh has let it be known that she will not accompany her husband when he returns to Australia in November to stage a cycle of Barrie comedies (“The Admirable Crichton,” ‘’The Little Minister,” “What Every Woman Knows,” and another), but she hopes to return the year following with some fresh plays by the authors who suit her so well —A. A. Milne and Somerset Maugham. Artie Danvers, who claims Wellington as his birthplace, is doing a popular dance turn in the music-halls of South Africa. His dancing partner, Lily Lestrange, comes from Sydney. Probably (says a Wellington pap«r) he is Arthur Daniels, of Newtown, who left for Africa some years back. Mr Hugh J. Ward will produce the pantomine / ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ in Melbourne and ‘Cinderella’ at the Grand Opera-house, Sydney, next Christmas. Mr Ward also bought the whole ‘Music Box’ revue, by Irving Berlin and other lyric writers. Nearly everyone in Australia who goes to theatres has heard of its fame. He has also in his suit case three revues that have captivated London audiences at the Hippodrome. They are ‘Better Days’ ‘Leap Year,’ and ‘Brighter London.’ Mr Robert Simmers, a recent leading member of the Auckland Amateur Operatic Society, won the prize for singing offered by Farmer’s Radio Broadcasting Company, of Sydney. The award was £3O, and an engagement at the Tivcli Theatre, Sydney, and Farmer’s Broadcasting. There were 1,060 entries for the competition. These American actresses are refreshingly frank. One Beatrice Noyes, a brunette beauty, who is playing lead on Broadway in a farce called “The Fall Guy,” opens her heart to an interviewer thus: “My first husband’s third wife dropped in my dressing-room the other night and said: ‘Bee, I’ll have to wear a blond wig in the new piece. I daren’t touch it (her own), fcr you know our husband doesn’t like blond hair.’ ” Mr Harold Carr returned to Auckland by the Aorangi after a trip to New York. He talks illuminatingly of things theatrical on Broadway, and opens wide the eyes of country folk in little New Zealand. While abroad Mr Carr stage-managed Emelie Polini’s production of ‘The Flaw’ (renamed ‘Obsession’) in New York. In the cast were Harry Plimmer and Reynolds Denniston (both (New Zealanders). Judith Anderson, the Australian actress wfao had to go to America to find her diadem of stardom, is advertised these days in the New York papers as one of David Belasco’s “Trinity of Triumphs.” She is playing in “The Dove” at the Broadway Empire. Coming from comparative obscurity, Ward Lyons, who is playing “Cappy Ricks’ at the Palace Theatre, has been responsible for fireworks amongst the public of Melbourne, Adelaide, and different country I centres. Who is this Ward Lyons? Never I heard of him before. This is what the public says, but not so amongst the theat- I rical professions, where he has long been ! regarded as a very sound character actor, j Mr Lyons is a Ballarat man, and that is in itself a distinction (writes J.M. in The Sydney Referee.) He was born in Redan, a suburb of the Golden City, and he first came under the influence of William Hoskins, the famous Shakespearean actor, who instructed Sir Henry Irving, and had I as pupils in Australia J. B. Atholwood and Arthur Greenaway. ... It was Hoskins who told Lyons as -a boy that he was a comedian, not tragedian, and to use Lyons’s own expression, “It took all the [ starch out of me, because I though I could act in tragedy,” His first appearance was in 1887 in Launceston, playing in ‘Formosa,’ written by Dion Boucicault’s father. In those early days Ward Lyons recalls such names as Tommy Hudson (the burnt-cork comedian), Johnny O’Neil, Charles Morteyn, Grattan Riggs (the famous Irish comedian, whom he first saw in Ballarat in 1880 j under the management of Marion Willis, ' whom Ward married). Ward Lyons played 1 with Grattan Riggs in Melbourne in 1898, and laid the foundation stone cf the hospital in which Riggs died in Strahan, on the west coast of Tasmania. SLAPPED AND KICKED. The difficulty in keeping the peace among highly-strung artistes, recalling the spitting scene in the Vienna Opera House, in which Mme. Olizewska and Mme Jeritza were the principals, was demonstrated at the London Palladium, where the Pounds sisters (Lorna and Toots) are strong favourites in the new spectacular and successful revue, “Sky High” (says the Sydney Sun). The famous Russian dancer, Nattova, walked out of the theatre after slapping the face of Toots Pounds. The trouble, of which jealousy was the basis, had been simmering for several days. Nattova says: “The Pounds sisters have persistently annoyed me. * They objected to the attractiveness of my dresses, and to the length of my turn. They complained of my doing exercises in the wings, and therefore I am ordered to remain in the dressing-room until the curtain is up. The result was that I lost myself in the darkness, arrived late, and refused to perform. “The next evening, coming off, Toots [ gives me a hard push. I am much an- i noyed, and I slap her face. After that the sisters are much frightened, and they place a great big man at the door of their | dressing-room, who accompanies them as they go to the stage. ‘Taney big, strong Lorna being frightened of little me! It is dreadful for an artiste to try and work under such conditions” Lorna Pounds says she cannot explain the unpleasantness. “We have been kind to Nattova, coming, as she did, as a stranger,” said Lorna, “She thought she would have made a greater success than she has actually done. She threatened to mark me for life, also to ‘lay out’ Toots. “When Toots was going on to the stage Nattova said, ‘One, two three,’ and kicked Toots, who said, ‘Don’t, please.’ Nattova slapped her face, and hit Toots with a basket. Toots was carried, dazed, to her dressing-room, and went to bed suffering from nervous shock.” Lorna and Toots Pounds are two Australian girls who went to England and, by sheer personality and ability, became sought after headliners in the vaudeville world. After a successful career in London they were brought back by Hugh Ward to star in Australia, and they appeared at the Grand Opera House, Sydney, in “Rockets.” Toots Pounds has made her name in revue and song and dance and comedy, and Lorna’s best work has been ■ done in characterisation. The two girls were remarkable mimics. They were in New Zealand with “Peter Pan.” *