THE PLAY AND THE PLAYERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6130, 17 March 1898, Page 1

THE PLAY AND THE PLAYERS.

[By Prompter in " Canterbury Times."! Mr Bland Holt has purchased the Australian rights of the new drama Hoiu London Lives which is at present running at the London Princess. Mr Eobert Inman and his wife, Miss Maud Appleton, left New Zealand for Sydney on Feb. 26. The managers of the Oamaru Theatre Eoyal intend to have the building thoroughly renovated from floor to ceiling. The main hall, ballroom, passages, &c, are all to be cleaned and painted and the building generally put in the pink of repair, while the scenery and (stage appurtenances are ako to be overhauled and increased. It appears that Miss Alice Leainar has left Australia for England, not for America. Mr Wallace Browulow is stated to be talking of giving xxp his hotel at Kalgoorlie. The popular baritone has, it is reported, been clearing nearly .£9O per week from the business. Among the passengers b 5 the Alameda on her last voyage from San Francisco was Mv A. L. Cunard, well-known in theatrical circles throughout the colonies. Mr Cunard's visit is for the purpose of making arrangements for a tour of Australia by the Tiedeman Vaudeville Company, a strong combination of twelve performers, who will probably come across from America by the April mail steamer. Mr Cnnard is also arranging for the visit of several American specialty artists, including Miss Jessie Millar, a solo cornetist, who has won a great reputation in the States by her wonderful playing, Professor Gillano, a clay modeller, and Eice and Elener, a pair of clever bar artists. Consider the murdered Terriss as a " rolling stone " (says the Sydney Bulletin). At fourteen joined the navy as a middy ; at seventeen came into some money, left the navy, went to India and started as a tea-planter ; got tired of this, started home again and was shipwrecked on the way, all hands suffering . great privations. Next became apprenticed to a firm of engineers, tired of this quickly, took a super's billet at the Prince of Wales' Theatre, Birmingham, 15s a week. Drifting to London, was introduced to Mrs Bancroft, who gave him a small part. Shortly after went to the Falkland Islands sheep farming, didn't like it, started home again, and the chip was lost in a gale off Gibraltar. After two days' exposure in an open boat was picked up by a passing steamer. Next got an engagement from F. B. Chatterton to play Malcolm Graeme in Lady of the Lake at Drury Lane. Went to Kentucky, United States, as a horse-breeder, soon dropped it, returned to England in '72, took the stage name of William Terriss, and found his cue at last. Born '49, name William Lewin, father a barrister, mother a niece of Grote, the historian. " About Jan. 30 ' Dot ' Boucicault will reopen the Court Theatre," (writestheLondon correspondent of the Sydney Bulletin) " with a new farcial comedietta, Trclawncy of the Wells, by Pinero, and success is more than probable. Hildn Spohg and Pattie Browne are both in the cast. Dot plays an old earl, and Irene Vanbrugh is heroine. Not the least important mummer is ' our earl ' —Lord Eosslyn, fifth holder of that cen-tury-old peerage. On the bills he is merely ' James Erskine ' — his first two names — and to the company he is simply ' Jimmy.' He married one of E. C. Vyner's daughters, and spent the wholesale coal - miner's money and his own with the ' quick and the dead'— the latter mostly. The ' uncrowned ' Prince has fed at his table, and he haa had some good ' gee-gees ' in his stables. Minting, the famous flat-racer, and winner of the Grand Prix, was his father-in-law's ; and Buccaneer Jimmy bought as a selling-

plater. On him he won £>2,'JW itt buts in his first race, the Great Kbor Handicap, and then took the Ascot Cup and City and Suburban. But the ' books ' got it all, for he was a reckless plunger, and now he is an actor for a wage on which he has to keep his wife, to whom: he is much attached." • I have clipped the following paragraphs from the Sydney Bulletin: — Wizard Morritt put people in mind of another wizard, Jacobs, familiar, here at Coppin's Olympic, the Iron Pot, over forty years ago. Some time after his Melbourne appearance Jacobs was showing at Scarborough. He made an omelette in a gentleman's hat, singed the hat badly and covered it with grease, and flatly refused to pay for the wreck. The gent suinmonecl him in the police-court. There the dirty, hat was reproduced, and shocked the .Bench. The wizard took it in hand and said there was nothing the matter with jt, at which a roar of disgust arose. Then he handed the belltopper back to the Bench, .quite restored. It .was Only a deep -laid scheme of advertisement. ' * * * Viator : "In Australia one is always encountering Augustus Glover, as a Triton amid the minnows, with a cart, of Thespis going round for bush education. Looking for somewhat else, I dropped to-day in a London newspaper on his debut in that city, just upon- thirty years ago, as Colonel Briton in The Wonder at the Princess's. At that time Irving was acting Bob Gassitt, a minor part in Dearer than Life, with Toole, L. Brough, and Wyndham. He was three years short of The Bells. A Clement Scott or Archer of the era, asked to pick the coming man, would mass a batch of Glovers and Irvings. Prank Cates, as a fashionable amateur, was just then working up for his Hamlet, in which his subordinates included Beerbohm Tree and Herbert Flemming." No fewer than fifty-eight new dramatic pieces were introduced at the London West End theatres during the year 1597. ■*■ Miss Nellie Stewart is reported to have received an offer of .£IOO a week from a j London manager to appear as principal boy in a pantomine. A play which Mdrae. Bernhardt is soon to give in Paris has the Empress Josephine as its heroine. The French drama deals with the divorce of Josephine from Napoleon. Vienna is 'going to turn moral, too. The ballet corps at the Imperial Opera House has received orders to wear " roomy white silk stockings" over its tights henceforth. Mrs Brown-Potter and Mr Kyrle Bellew were to have re-appeared in London at the Adelphi on Jan. 25. Charlotte Corday was to form the opening attraction. Apart from the stars themselves, the published cast did not contain any names familiar to local theatregoers. Messrs Williamson and Musgrove have concluded their London season at the Shaftsbury. When they again take over the same house they will once more rever to comic opera, and produce a new piece of tne kind called Little Miss Twopence, a title, by the way, facetiously says a London scribe, in which there does not appear to be much change. - Women are proverbially reticent concerning their age, but the ages of the follov/ing well-known actresses are believed to be accurate : — Mrs Patrick Campb'ell is thirty-one, Lady Bancroft is sixty, and Mrs John Wood is almost the same age. Miss Julia Neilson's years are twenty-nine, so are Miss Annie Hughes'. Miss Letty Lind is thirty-four, Mrs Langtry forty-six, and Madame Bernhardt fifty-four. ' A cablegram received by the Australian papers recently states that Madamo Sarah Bernbavdt has for some time past been suffering from illness, which the doctors attending her ascertained was due to a tumour. Her condition at last became so serious than an operation for the removal of the growth became imperative. This was successfully performed on Thursday, and Madame Bernhardt is making good progress towards recovery. Realism reached a fine pitch of perfection at a Lancashire theatre recently. The hero was supposed to be lynched, and so effectively was the performance gone through that when the curtain fell the unfortunate man was found to be unconscious. His injuries are of such a character that he will not be able to play again for some time to come. The victim has heen advised to bring an action against the manager of the theatre. Mr Forbes-Robertson, who recently scored a tremendous hit in Hamlet at the Lyceum has received an offer to play it in Germany, where, curiously enough, the play is far better and more generally known than it is in England (says the London Pelican). Shakspere is quite a household word in Germany, and the average Teuton is able to quote whole pages from the plays. How many Englishmen are able to quote even a dozen lines accurately when asked to do so effhand? Miss Lily Dampier met with an accident at Colombo that, at one time, promised serious consequences. By some means she fell over into the water between the mail steamer and- the wharf. Two coolies at once dived after her. Afraid, however, of being crushed against the wharf by the roll of the steamer, they had to dive down again, taking Miss Dampier with them, and come up the other side of the bow of the steamer. The situation was a thrilling one for a few moments. Last week I mentioned that a play entitled Dreyfus, theMarlyr of Devil's Island had been played at Amsterdam. Since then I read that the authorities have forbidden the production of the piece at the Hague. The characters contained in the drama include the French Minister of War, General Mercier, General Boisdeffre, and Commandant Esterhazy, and the system adopted was that of bringing the play up to date at every performance by making the last act end with the most recent news to hand of the case. One night, for instance, the curtain came down on the reading of a letter said to have been addressed to the Pope by Madame Dreyfus, whilst on another occasion the veiled lady was introduced. Such a performance (says a London writer) — highly applauded though it may have been — was in very doubtful taste, and the Hague Burgomaster is to be commendud for adopting rigorotis measures for its suppression. In connection with Sir Henry Irving's production of Peter the Great, it is interesting to recall some former stage pieces in which, the great Czar has figured. In 1807 Charles Kemble and his wife played the principal parts in a "musical drama" in three acts, written by one Andrew Cherry, and set to music by Youve, which was produced at Covent Garden. The plot was decidedly eccentric, ignoring, as it did, the ugly facts of Peter's ill-treatment of Eudoxia. The author chose to make the monarch disguise himself as a shipwright in his own dockyard, for the purpose of becoming violently enamoured of Catherine and weidingher out of hand— a sufficiently daring departure from the path of history. It is chronicled, moreover, that this version did not run a week. Peter the Great, or the Battle ofPultowa, was another attempt produced anonymously at DruryLane some twenty years after, and, despite the fact that the cast included such actors as Listen, Farren, Vining, and Ellen Tree, the play scarcely met with a better fate than its predecessor. The Star of the North was the title of yet another Peter the €h-cat piece j, while a belated opera called Peter the Shipicright was produced at the Gaiety somo decades since. Thus it is mainly m musical pieces that the Czar has previously flgured 0Q E j. ,