Repertory Plays for Melbourne

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 726, 27 July 1929, Page 28

Repertory Plays for Melbourne

FRANK CLEWLOW RETURNS WITH NEW PRODUCTIONS

With a portfolio of new plays which have not yet beeji produced on any stage, the director of the Melbourne Repertory Theatre, Prank D. Clewlow, has returned to Australia from a six months’ tour of Great Britain and Europe. Mr. Clewlow was in Auckland about two years ago with the Allan Wilkie Shakesperian Company, which he came from England to join. “In England,” he said on his return to Melbourne, “I managed to arrange with the dramatic agencies to supply us with new' plays. We will have the right to produce them here first. “I have also secured the rights to the brilliant French play by Frank Vernon, ‘Maya,’ which created tremendous sensations -when produced in London and in New York.” Anrac Day Play He also had obtained the broadcasting rights for a play written specially for Armistice Day in London, “The White Chateau,” by Captain Reginald Berkeley. Mr. Clewlow hoped to arrange for it to be broadcast on Anzac Day. Mr. Clewlow was amazed at the appreciation of dramatic art on the Continent, especially in Germany, Austria and Czecho-slovakia. where State and municipal opera houses and theatres give practical encouragement to the opera and the drama. Prom the day he landed in Vienna until he got to Paris Mr. Clewlow saw either one or two plays each day, Sundays included. New Productions “Our first productions will be 'A Hundred Years 01d,,’ by the Quintero brothers, and an adaptation by Ernest Goodw’in of a Grimm’s fairy tale called ‘The Devil Among the Skins,’ ” Mr. Clewlow said. “In our second bill will be ‘The Race with the Shadow,’ by Von Scholz, translated by Tristan Rawson. It is a tragedy, with only four characters, which was produced with great success at the Gate Theatre in London. A Moliere merry costume comedy, ‘Les Fourberies de Scapiu,’ adapted by Lady Gregory, will be our third production.”