AUSTRALIA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5505, 4 March 1896, Page 4

AUSTRALIA.

Mr J. C. Williamson says that never again will he run two theatres in one town. Charles Eyley writes from London to a friend in Melbourne that owing to a severe bronchial affection, he has been obliged TO give up singing. It is rumoured that a marriage has been arranged between Miss Harrie Ireland ana Mr King Hedley, lately appearing in American plays in Sydney. , Trilby will be played in Australia for the first time at the Princess's Theatre, Melbourne, on April 4. The American contingent that will appear in the piece consists of nine players. ' , Miss Carrie Tapley (sister of the popular tenor, Mr Joseph Tapley), who recently visited Australia on a health trip, is about to settle in Melbourne as a Wacher of the pianoforte and solo pianiste. , In conversation with a representative of the Melbourne " Punch " Marie Luella said:— ''My real name is Luella Shoars. Marie is only a stage ' Christian '• name. And, by the way, though you mayn't think' it, I've been a baroness — yes, a real live baroness ! I married in 1885 the Baron Baillot de Guerville." Items from the Sydney " Bulletin : — Eickards intends re-decorating and refitting Melbourne Opera House, and modelling his programmes with a view to catching "sassiety" circles, since "sassiety" people are 'displaying a deßire to visit the show. incog. There is a proverb about two stools. . ■ -.. .-.-'■ Miss Polly Emery, the. most effective stage slavey in Australia, whose Belinda in Our Boys was a poem written in tjoa! smudge, and who brightened \up Terry's dreariest comedy with her pourtrayal of a certain flat-footed spinster, is going the way of all Australian talent— to London. "Pro" writes:— "Some trades union is necessary among 'pros* for their protection as regards salaries. Variety people suffer the most. From £1 10s to JJ3 per week (and that generally owed) is the usual with small artistes. One singer was paid three shillings for two songs at a wellpatronised pleasure resort, on Anniversary Day. Where does the living wage come in?" One feature in Mrs Ebbsmith, at Sydney Lyceum, is the way Mrs Brough fits her dress to the occasion. In Act I she is a serious-minded agnostio in a neatly-fitting dark costume. In Acts II and HI she is a desperate, worldly woman in a glaringly Vshaped evening-dress ; and in Act IV she has gone back for consolation tocher longlost religion, and ia a Magdalen in a dingy brown frock, lank, disordered hair, a pallid face, and a scorched hand — the one with which she had snatched the Bible out of the fire — tied up in a rag. An ill-fitting frock and hair rushed together in a scraggy, unpioturesque knob are the outward symptoms of piety on the stage as well as elsewhere. Why doesn't some original dramatist make his Magdalen repent in a neatly-fitting expensive frock with soft creamy lace at her neck and wrists, and her hair in perfect order, and Bilk stockings, and the smallest of tan shoes at -thirty-five shillings a- pair ? The . persistent teaching of the same old doctrine that a woman can only reform with her oldest clothes, on, flimply.meana.that the woman who has afiy good oiothes left feels called on to remain ■■^ckecL'-'- ■„..' : . ;■■ •; ■ ,■■':.