THE PLAY AND PLATERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5700, 20 October 1896, Page 1

THE PLAY AND PLATERS.

[By Prompter in " CAN-rausußT Trass-,'*!

The Brown-Potter Company will be in. Christchurch early next yeas.-

The Firm's Opera Company,, after nearly fourteen years' uninterrupted work, is to be disbanded for a time. When re-organised, it will contain a number of now faces chiefly imported from England. " Mr Bland Holt has produced at Sydney Eoyal, "For England," a military drama new to the colonies. The play is by Sutton Vane, and the chief scene shows a battle in the Transvaal, and there is also a hunting tableau.

George S. Coppin, the grand old man of the colonial stage, undismayed by recent financial troubles (says the Melbourne Leader) has set himself to conquer-fortune anew. He is touring now with Maggie Moore, and we are glad to hear that success has smiled on his efforts. There are few men who at seventy-seven would be ready to begin the world afresh. But he has indomitable pluck, and has lost fortunes before only to make them again. He is conficlentthat,give him time, history will repeat itself. In the South Australian visit the irrepressible interviewer seized on Mr Coppin, and dragged out some or' his reminiscences. Public taste he believes to have become sadly degenerate. " Yes ; I believe if poor Brooke were to rise from his grave and play some of his Shaksperian parts the public would not be attracted, so much has the taste altered from legitimate drama to variety entertainment. The lighter and more frivolous style of entertainment is growing, too. They have a great advantage j in London in that they are permitted to sell liquor at the music halls. This has never yet been permitted in the colonies, but there would be a great fortune in it to anybody allowed to do it." Who was the greatest actor these colonies have seen? Mr Coppin, speaking from the depths of long experience, answers " Brooke, without a doubt. Hands down, he was the best. Old Kean was a man of genius ; you could not tell what he was going to do at night. He was a man of impulse. Brooke was exactly the same — a man of genius' and impulse. Macready was also a great tragedian, but he was a man of study. He would tell an actor withia an inch where he would expect to find him at night. Charles Kean studied and laboured very hard, as persons with indifferent talent must do. Macready and Chai-les Kean belonged to that class ; old Kean and G. V. Brooke to the other."

The Parisian whistles at the theatre in order to show his disgust; the Londoner to show his delight and approval.

A Paris chief of the claque r who sued a theatre manager for breach of contract, has elicited from the Civil Tribunal of the Seine a decision that the claque is illegal and contrary to the public welfare, on the grounds that it hinders the expression of unbiased opinion, destroys the liberty of the paying public, and is likely to give rise 1;o disturbances.

The third act of the "Polar Star," a play recently produced in America, shows a ship buried in the ice. The sails are furled, and great icicles hang from all points. Only the bow of the vessel is free. The sides are stove in, and the recent work of the ship's carpenter at various places tells eloquently the story of adverse adventure in the North Seas. The entire back and sides of the stage are unbroken, over 500 feet of canvas being used to give a cycloramic effect.

.*■ Sarah- Bernhardfs Brittany estate is' called " Belle Isle ; " and is perched on a craggy promontory on the sea coast. The house she lives in was formerly used as a barracks, and here, with some of her friends, and all of her dogs, the actress spends a month or two in every year. Her principal pastimes are hunting and whist. Sardou has nearly finished a new play of modern life for the great actress, who announces that within a year she will undertake' Hamlet in Paris, and add her name to the list of women who have already played this title role.

Apropos of the high-hat law in one of the American States, the London correspondent of a Chicago journal says : — A woman of the select and fashionable London world no mere thinks of appearing at the theatre in hat or bonnet than Wth her hair done in curl papers, even were she permitted (in reserved portions) to wear other head-dress thau an aigrette or a similar ornament allowed at any formal evening reception. In London the orchestra stalls, the dress circle and the boxes impose evening dress ; and of course no lady is in evening dress who wears either bonnet or hat, however diminutive those articles might be. Several theatres, notably the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, have the words " evening dress indispensable" printed upon the tickets sold for special parts of the house — boxes, orchestra stalls and balcony stalls. Other parts of the house, such as the pit, amphitheatre, and gallery, receive you as you may come from the streets. If in the course of your wanderings throughout London you chance to enter a theatre in the stalls of which you see women wearing hats or bonnets, you may know without other evidence that you are in a resort

of the lower classes, to which the " gentry " do never betake them.

Bulletin pars. : — Scot Inglis left an office-stool in Cortnell Hogarth's grocery store, Melbourne, in 1890, to join Maurice F. Kemp's company, then showing at Geelong. Scot'? climb upward in six years suggests that a good many actors who can't climb ought to change place with a good many clerks, who pine upon office-stools. Not 5 per cent of the born actors in this world ever think of appearing on the stage. Not having been born with the necessary " front," they don't try to find it:

The tale goes that an actress, now " resting, " insists upon being privately boxed when sho condescends to visit any theatre "on the never." If demur is made, the goddess offers a <£50-note in payment, and gains her point through lack of change. The other night, a -whisper of her coming preceded her, and the treasurer lay in waiting. The lady arrived with the old bluff, and, to her dismay, was obliged with £48, cash down, and at last the historic «£SO-uote changed hands. But she took out her 40 shillings-worth of private-box in remarks. This story sounds more correct in spirit than in truth.