MISS NELLIE STEWART

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1930, Page 29 (Supplement)

MISS NELLIE STEWART

AUSTRALIA'S “PETER PAN.”

PART IN NEW COMEDY.

Sydney, April 17.

• ' Miss Nellie Stewart has been called “the Peter Pan of the Australian stage,” and when she appears in “Romance” at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne next Saturday people will still marvel at her freshness of voice and grace of movement, just as they made her triumphant return as “Sweet. Nell. Miss Stewart leads a remarkably active life in Sydney and assists from time to time in many charitable objects, besides taking a keen interest in women’s clubs and the like. She has been in Melbourne all this week, super; vising, her latest production, for she still insists on attending to every’ de-: tail herself before the first night, of the 'show- in which -she appears. Those who are associated■ with her at the rehearsals marvel at her youth, even more than those who see her from the front of the house. In spite of her age she never ..seems to tire, and she is certainly just as much a stickler for detail as she ever was, and for perfection as well. Nellie Stewart retains a vivid memory .of her stage debut at the age of three with .'Charles Kean at the old Haymarket Theatre in Melbourne, which has seen so many of her greatest triumphs. More than 28 years have passed since she played her first. drariiatic role in “Sweet Nell Of Old Drury,” which she revived at the Comedy Theatre in: Melbourne only last year. . , Miss Stewart's first appearance in “Sweet Nell”- at the Princess Theatre in February 1902, marked the beginning .of many successes in comedy, drama, and tragedy. She was in “La Fille dp Tambour Major,” which George Musgrove produced in 1880, and in December, 1883, she made her first opera appearance on a big scale in the . Gilbert, and Sullivan' “Patience.” But long before .that she had played “Rackstraw,” the tenbr part, at the old St. George’s Hall; in Sydney. - Now Nellie Stewart is undertaking a part which she has for years wished to play in Melbourne. In “Romance” she will be Margherita Cavallini, a renowned opera singer, who bears lightly the minor encumbrances of a past, and causes the unsophisticated Thomas Armstrong, rector of St. Giles’, to fall wildly inlove with her. .The part was played by Madge Fabian- in 1916. Doris Keane rose to stardom in the role when she played it for the first time in New York.

Nellie Stewart will be associated in the Melbourne production with her own daughter, Nancye Stewart, and her daughter’s husband, Mayne Linton. Another 'artist well known to New Zealand, audiences will be Gaston Morvale, who has been the villain in many an old-time melodrama in the Dominion.