MUSIC AND DRAMA

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19060, 3 May 1930, Page 25 (Supplement)

MUSIC AND DRAMA

Mr Harry P. Muller, General Manager in New Zealand for J. C. Williamson Ltd., denies the recently published statement that the firm has decided to suspend dramatic and musical productions in New Zealand for twelve months, in favour of the “ talkies.” On the contrary J. C. Williamson Ltd. are making arrangements to present to Dominion audiences some of their most notable stage productions, including, it is hoped, the plays in which William Faversham, the noted American dramatic and romantic actor, will produce in Australia; “ New Moon,” the entrancing and spectacular musical play; “ Love Lies,” Clem Dawe’s new musical comedy; Gladys Moncrieff ‘in “ The Maid of the Mountains,” and “ The Merry Widow”; and the other big J. C. Williamson production “ The Belle of New York” with all-star casts. r*2 *< Clem Dawe, the popular young comedian now under the J. C. Williamson banner, it is hoped, will soon make his first appearance in New Zealand in musical comedy in his latest and greatest success “ Love Lies.” “My failing as a youngster,” Clem says, “ was whistling and making grimaces before the mirror. The rest of the family used to have uneasy thoughts about me, apparently being under the impression that I wasn’t ‘ all there ’. Now I get paid for it—though there isn’t a mirror! ” Clem Dawe made his first appearance in New Zealand with his brother, Eric Edgley, as the comedy team, Edgley and Dawe, in J. and N. Tait pantomime “ Sinbad the Sailor.” A New Zealand journalist who has been a resident of Johannesburg for the past five years forwards the following concerning Alec Regan, who is well known to New Zealand audiences:—Alec Regan, the popular light baritone, who starred through New Zealand with the Midnight Frolics Company, and played a single tour through the Dominion in 1929 for Regent Theatres, is returning to New Zealand shortly to take up a managerial appointment in Dunedin with Beaumont Smith’s Regent Theatres. Mr Regan, who will return with a bride, Miss Dolly Hocking, of Norwood, South Australia, has just completed a very successful three months in South Africa, where he appeared in Johannesburg, Durban and the towns along the Gold Reef. He orginated the highly popular “after pieces” at the Empire in the

111 BS !E iU @3 El ID ® HI HI ® ® Hi BH ® IS @1 HI ® 13 Gold City and put one song on the map of South Africa—“ Tip Toe Through the Tulips,” from the revue “Gold Diggers on Broadway.” Alec Regan has made a host of friends in South Africa, but “New Zealand is the country for me,” he said just before he left Johannesburg. “I shall only be really happy when I get back there.” Mr Reg Tapley, son of Mr H. L. Tapley, ex-M.P. for Dunedin North, who was well known in local amateur theatrical circles and who afterwards played principal parts in J. C. Williamson’s Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera company in Australia and New Zealand, proceeded to England last year to continue his stage career. There he has studied singing under Mr Maurice D'Oisly and Miss Rosina Buckman during the past six months. Cabled advice has now been received that he has secured an engagem<pit to take a principal part in “The Three Musketeers” at Drury Lane Theatre. Miss Jocelyn Yeo, the young Aucklander who has been so successful in London as a danseuse, is featured in the February “London Dancing Times” in a photographic study. She was offered a position as principal dancer in the Lyceum pantomime, but has accepted Mr J. B. Cochran’s offer of the position of premiere danseuse at the Hotel Splendide. Open-air orchestral concerts are given in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens on Sundays. So far six concerts have been given and the attendance has exceeded 100,000. George Wallace the popular revue favourite of Australia and New Zealand, w r ho recently finished a fifteen weeks’ season at the Melbourne Tivoli, leaves Australia, after visits to Adelaide and Perth, for London. He has accepted an offer of £l5O a week to appear in London, and it is expected that he will take with him two or three members of his Australian company. It is an interesting fact that two of the biggest successes in musical productions ever achieved by J. C. Williamson Ltd. are revivals, which have been running simultaneously. These are “ The Maid of the Mountains ” at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, and “ The Belle of New York” at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney. “The Merry Widow” staged at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, on April 26, promises to equal the success of “ The Maid of the Mountains,” judging by the advance booking and the enthusiasm of playgoers. Later on, J. C. Williamson Ltd. intend to present “ The New Moon ” in Melbourne. This is the latest success of

Oscar Hammerstein, who recently paid a flying visit to Australia “The New Moon,” it is hoped, will be scheduled by J. C. Williamson Ltd. for production in New Zealand. It is described as one of the most beautiful and spectacular musical plays ever brought to this part of the world, and many unusual features are presented in it. William Faversham, in “The Hawk” at Sydney Royal on Saturday night, did something inexcusable (says the Sydney “Bulletin”). He acted. It isn’t done. He should look round the younger generation of stage inhabitants and correct his ways before it is too late. There are plenty of models. From them he can learn that if someone has been foolish enough to state in the programme that he is Count George de Dazetta, he should leave it at that. The playwright who exercised his brains and the subtleties of his craft in creating a character of that name should also be forgotten. Such people are only small fry compared with the player, and should never be allowed to prevent him from letting the audience enjoy the sort of chap he is personally. All the leading actors understand this, and it’s simply heresy for a Faversham to come along and recreate in the flesh a promptscript Count George de Dazetta as if there were some sacred obligation to do so. If he is passed out of the Actors’ Union, he will have no one to blame but himself. He is not even content with making a flesh-and-blood reality of Dazetta. It is part of the playwright's scheme that something more than the mere dropping of the curtain should suggest the passage of time after the second act. The curtain rises on the third, and the time that has passed is not more than that taken to stroll outside and have a smoke. Then Faversham enters, and with him the illusion that months have gone by. The truth is. that Faversham is an artist. 5* Inquiries made in England disclose the fact that many towns are without theatres other than those devoted to the screening of talking pictures. In many centres of the North of England talkies have killed the theatrical business. Within twenty miles of one important centre there are thirteen legitimate theatres and seven music halls. Three years ago the numbers were twenty-four and eighteen respectively.

A tradition of more than 300 years was broken at Oxford on March 3, when the St John’s College Mummers presented their annual play with a girl in the cast. The play chosen was Reginald Berkeley’s “ French Leave,” and Miss Sylvia Sharpe, playing the part of the officer’s wife who visits her husband in the battle area, was the first woman to appear in a production by the Mummers since their foundation in 1602. Previously they had always adhered to the ancient custom of having women’s parts played by young men. Dramatic critics can lay the flattering unction to their souls (or whatever they have in lieu thereof) that one of their number—the same London “Sunday Express” man who was biffed by an indignant stage lad\'—changed the luck of Frank Harvey’s “The Last Enemy,” turning it from a failure into a success of this year (writes a Sydney “Bulletin” correspondent). Opening night notices had been so bad that the play’s doom seemed sealed, and the manager, Walls, was arranging for the obsequies. Then the “Sunday Express” notice declared that if the play was a failure, dramatic appreciation was dead in England. The manager had another look and decided to let it go on. Now it is making fortunes for all concerned. A society, known as “ The Friends of the Opera Union,” which was inaugurated at Cologne, Germany, only a few months ago by the management of the Municipal Opera, has already over 10,000 members. It aims at organising people who are interested in opera, but who live in distant towns and country districts and find it difficult to attend performances at the Cologne Opera House. Special performances are arranged for them on Sunday afternoons, and all the tickets are sold at reduced prices through the 81 branches of the society scattered throughout the Rhine Valley. So far the society has proved an enormous success. Albani’s death recalls the operatic war in London between Mapleson (Drury Lane) and Gye (Covent Garden) (says a contemporary). It was owing to a trick of Gve’s that Mapleson missed introducing Albani to London in 1872. She had no contract, but came with a letter of introduction to Mapleson from a Colonel M’Cray. She told the cabby to drive her to the Royal Italian Opera (both houses were run under that title). Gye received her graciously and signed her up at once. Then she learnt he was not Mapleson. Gye explained there was a man named Mapleson who rented a theatre somewhere round the corner, where operas and other things were occasionally played. but the real Italian Opera was his. Albani was satisfied. Mapleson could have taken legal action, but declined.

In later years she appeared tinder his management in America. Miss Jessie Bond, who in the ’eighties was one of the popular idols of the London Savoy, has published the “Life and Reminiscences of Jessie Bond, as Told by Herself to Ethel M’George.” She is now in her 78th year, and it is more than 50 years since she first sang in “Pinafore.” Miss Bond says of the Savoy of the 'eighties:—“l think there never was a theatre run on lines of such strict propriety; no breath of scandal ever touched it in all the 20 years of my experience. Gilbert would suffer no loose word or gesture either behind the stage or on it, and watched over us young women like a dragon. One illustrative incident is described. While “Patience” was being played a letter was brought to Miss Bond and Gilbert saw it. “What’s that, Jessie—a love-letter?” he said. “Here it is, you can look for yourself,” I replied, indifferently, handing it to him. It was from a party of four young men in one of the stage boxes, inviting me to supper with them after the performance. Gilbert was furious. He went round to the box, rated the young men for insulting a lady in his company, and insisted on their leaving the house forthwith. London papers publish tributes to the memory of Madame Kirkby Lunn, the famous contralto, who died in March. One writer says: “ Madame Kirkby Lunn’s career should be a wonderful object lesson to the young and aspiring student, for she owed her position at the top of her profession and as principal contralto at Coven t Garden to her conscientiousness and the keen observation with which she took every possible chance that came her way.” For three years she was the principal contralto of the Carl Rosa Company and in 1902 she came into the full plenitude of her powers when she took her rightful place as one of the leading singers at Covent Garden, where she was a prominent figure for ten years. Her success in opera was equally notable in America. But it was not only on the lyric stage that she achieved distinction. As a singer of English ballads and German lieder her reputation was just as securely established, and the great English festivals time and again proved her pre-emi-nence in oratorio. “ There was none quite like her,” says another writer, “ for she had a great versatility, and could sing with fluency and familiarity in at least four European languages, while her voice at its best was of remarkable beauty.” She practically retired from the operatic stage in the first year of the War, and was only rarely seen lately on the concert platform. Death came at the end of a long illness. j.j Contrasts between conditions on the English and the American stage were recently discussed by Robert Haslam following his first American engagement (says the “New York HeraldTribune”). “Bobby” Haslam, as he is known to friends, was brought to the United States especially to appear in “Thunder in the Air.” After a ten weeks’ run Mr Haslam was caught by Equity’s ruling, which provides that no foreign actor shall again appear professionally, following his original production, unless he has already acted 100 weeks in the United States, without an enforced six months’ vacation period. “The American ruling is perfectly fair, you know,” he declared. “It is simply ■ self-protection. But I shall try to register for the quota, for I intend to come again. I want to be free to sail and resail—to act on both sides of the water. The American theatre offers more than England’s from the point of view of art. But I don't admit that the English theatre is dead. I’m very sentimental about England. But while England can compete when it comes to a society play like ‘The First Mrs Fraser,’ when it comes to musical comedy—no. America takes bigger risks with her musical plays. Prices, of course, are bigger. England has no speculators. America, too, has better plays and playwrights. But no matter what the play, New York audiences are cold. Chicago’s are warmer. English audiences are so enthusiastic. On a first night in London, unless you get a dozen curtain calls at least, with curtain speeches galore, you’re a dismal failure. In the States applause doesn’t signify so much. American audiences never stay to applaud, as English audiences do. They’re in such p. hurry to reach home. But American audiences are more catered to than English audiences are, in spite of this. Their theatres are more modern—less draughty than ours. There are places to put your hats. Seats are more comfortable. Points that appeal to an English and an American audience differ radically. While a good drama will be liked by both, their sense of humour differs. It’s amazing the number of comedies that are dead failures on one side and successful on the other.” Last week (writes a New York correspondent, under date March 1) our drama was made up of many national patterns, including the Chinese. Mei Lan-fang, the idol, so they tell us, of--500,000 Orientals, paid America a first professional visit and performed before mystified, but frequently enchanted audiences. Enchanted, be it admitted, with the novelty of the exhibit, rather than the entertainment. Chinese drama is still a little difficult for even the most progressive of our drama students. Mr Mei is a good-looking little man of 37 years. In China, where he has been an actor since he was twelve years old, he is supremely the leader, the head of the Ching-churig monastery, no less, and “foremost of the Pear Orchard,” which means that all State authority recognises him as the first actor of the land. He also is a tan, and a tan, in case you have been neglectful of your * Chinese, is an impersonator of female parts. He has, I understand, never played anything but female parts, which helps to account for his amazing grace of movement. Set in the convention of ages, with every little movement of hand or hip, so to speak, having a meaning all its own, the test of perfection in a Chinese actor is his mastery of these conventions of his art. ’ And Mr Mei, his Chinese critics admit, has completely attained this mastery. What is most likely to impress Occidentals in his performance is the aforementioned grace,. emphasised by the mincing gait that is the indication of his assumed sex, and the extreme mobility of his features. His beaded black eyes, set in a perfect ivory mask, are wonderfully expressive in revealing all the major passions of joy, anger, sorrow, fear, hate, etc. His smile is coy, as becomes a maiden, and subtle. His enjoyment of humour is apparent and evidently genuine. Mei Lan-fang’s engagement lias been made possible by the China Institute in America, which thus hopes to correct such wrong impressions of Oriental art as we may be harbouring. Mr Mei is rich, with an income running into six figures. In China they pay 10 dollars a seat for his performances and he thinks the American price of 3 dollars is pretty cheap. He does not speak English. Johann Strauss’s operetta “Die Fledermaus”, known in some countries as “A Wonderful Night”, recently was presented for the 25,000 th time, according to the agents for Strauss’s widow in Vienna, who had kept strict account of its various performances in many parts of the world. It has undergone many changes of book, but the music has always held its own in whatever la.n--guage the operetta was sung.