AMUSEMENTS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14038, 22 October 1909, Page 6

AMUSEMENTS.

MILITARY DISPLAY. By special arrangement, to help to provide funds for the team to compete at the tournament at Palmerston North, the City Kifle Physical Drill Team, with the Garrison jjand in attendance and in conjunction with Pathe Pictures' Entertainment should produce a splendid programme for this evening. The team will go through physical drill, tent pitching and rifle practice, etc., and the Garrison Band will play selections. The picture films are picked from the present good programme and the evening's entertainment should be appreciated by all. At. present anything approaching ;i military display should help to arouse the enthusiasm of the people to support tlio efforts now being made to organise military defence of the Empire. The public should give the greatest possible support to this patriotic object. AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOME. That the interest in the forthcoming production of the above plav is at fever lieat can be seen by the large hooking of seats which has already taken place lor Saturday night, when "An Englishman's Home" will he staged at the That re Hoyal. .Mr Edwin Gench, having made arrangements with Mr J. C. Williamson, will present, the play on a scale of splendour. Specially self-rted English artists have been engaged fo fill all the principal parts of the piece. The air of mystery in retiard to "An

Englishman's Home" before its sensational production at Wyndham s Tlieatre was so rigidly niflijittiincQ "tlitit tlic rehearsals were conducted not at A\yndham's but at some, other theatre, whose name was not given to the public. The author now announced as Major du Maurier was simply described on the programme as "A fatriot.'' Mr I 1 rank Curzon, under whose management the piece was produced, knew who "A Patriot" was, but otherwise his identity remained a secret until it was torn from the reluctant keeping of those "In the know," presumably by enterprising interviewers after the play had caused a furore. It was supposed on this side of the globe when news came ot the remarkable enthusiasm exhibited at Wyndham's Theatre that the new drama must have been materially I assisted by spectacular scenery, but the contrary is the case, for an advance paragraph in the London "Daily Telegraph" shows that the three acts pass in one scene in 24 hours, and that in an interior —"The playroom of Mr. Brown's house, .Myrtle Villa, Wickham in Essex." This indicates that "An Englishman's Home" has won.popularity "by its stirring appeal to patriotism and no doubt by its striking dramatic situations. The question whether it was a work purporting to show that England was not prepared for war was duly considered by. the management, and at times the fate of the new piec«trembled in the balance ; but at last it was decided to go on —with what result everyone knows. The box plan is open at the Dresden, where seats mav he booked without extra charge.