MUSIC AND DRAMA

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19108, 28 June 1930, Page 27 (Supplement)

MUSIC AND DRAMA

It is reported that the great success of Maurice Moscovitcli in the New York production of “ Jew Suss,” may lead to J. C. Williamson engaging the Russian actor to pay another visit to Australia and appear in the piece. The West Australian Government (says an Australian paper) has followed the example of the Federal Government in granting Mr Wilkie exemption from the entertainment tax, but the Queensland Government has withdrawn the 50 per cent concession on rail rates it had extended to Mr Wilkie for eight years. As Mr Wilkie’s usual tour of Queensland covers some 2500 miles, this is rather a serious setback. If hard work returns theatrical dividends, Nellie Bramley should collect at the Sydney Opera House (saj r s a Sydney paper). She is putting on a new show weekly, and doing it well. No suggestion of the rush gets over the footlights; the solid bunch of players know their jobs better than most do in longer rehearsed offerings. Sound acting is helped in the current piece, “Anne 100 Per Cent,” by very good effects, and the show altogether is a good entertainer in the light comedy line. Murial Starr (writes the Sydney correspondent of the Auckland “Star”) wept copiously at her benefit when she made a farewell speech to Sydney playgoers , telling them that she would never act here again, but hoped they would see her on the talking pictures, and some day she would come back to visit the land that she had considered her home for the last seventeen years. It was all very pathetic, for Muriel Starr commanded enormous audiences and untold quantities of adulation in her heyday here, and has been considered in the theatrical profession the best “ trouper ” of them all. Danny Dennv, whose eight-feet odd of attenuated humanity has .been a perpetual source of amazement to the juvenile patrons of Wirths, is the latest Australian actor to seek fresh fields and pastures new in Europe (writes a Sydney “Bulletin” correspondent). The ship that took him away from Melbourne had to provide him with a special bed in which to stretch himself. Denny’s sole asset is his inches. As a comedian he is a melancholy fellow, like most persons whose glandular secretions have given them abnormal height or abnormal lack, of it. lie is a native of Wangaratta (Victoria). American papers report the death of Charles Gilpin, the negro actor who created the title role in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.” Gilpin made a sensation in the part. He had had considerable stage experience before he got the role, which came to him because of the excellence of his William Curtis, the negro preacher in John. Drinkwater’s “Abraham Lincoln.” j The very latest reasons for divorce have been advanced at bos Angeles, where Mrs Viola Barton, a circus fat lady, professionally known as “Little Baby Viola,” proceeded for a divorce against her husband on the ground that he worried her so much that she was fast losing her sole professional asset. At latest advices her weight had declined from 3Gst 81b to 20st Sib, and was still sinking. Dame Nellie Melba gave an afternoon concert, at the. Park Lane Hotel, London, in aid of the Children’s National 1

Adoption Society, which finds good homes for abandoned infants. “ After not singing in public for so long, I could not help being thrilled,” said Dame Nellie. “ But I have never sung in my life without being terribly nervous beforehand.” Some members of the Royal Family were present at the concert. Maurice Browne and Charles B. Cochran, two of London’s leading producers, met by agreement for the purpose of discussing the holding of an International Theatre Festival at the G 1 )b; Theatre, London, one of the several playhouses Browne bought with the profits of “Journey's End.” It was decided to hold the festival, and to stari with tho presentation of Alexander ■ Moissi in “Hamlet” and in _ Tolstoy’s “The Living Corpse,” following with i Pitoeff and his wife, Afrce. Ludmila and their company from the • Theatre des Arts, Paris. Towards the . end of this month Japan was to have : its turn with Tokujiro Tsutsui’s troupe, ■ which toured America in April. [ There will be general satisfaction, t and more than a little surprise as well, over the selection of Marc Connelly's “The Green Pastures” as this year’s Pulitzer prize play (says an American writer). No drama in several years has received so much praise as this dramatisation of Bradford Roark’s negro ’ story, “Or Man Adam and Ilis Chiii lun\” But despite this chorus of hal- ; lelujahs there may be a little discontent mixed therein, for the play is an ’ adaptation, and the Pulitzer fund was ' left to be given to the author of an “original” play. There will probably be , a protest, as there was when the prize went to “Hell-Bent-for-Heaven” by Hatcher Hughes in 1924. Everybody expected and wanted it to go to George Kelly for his “The Show Off.” Sir Thomas Beecham, the famous English conductor, scored a great triumph at the Cologne Opera House recently, when he inaugurated the Col- : cgne Opera Festival by conducting “ Die Meistersingers ” of Wagner. That this great Englishman should have been invited to Germany to conduct German opera was a tribute not only to the catholic views of the Cologne musical authorities, but to the musicianship of Sir Thomas Beecham himself. The success which attended the performance must have amply justified the decision of the authorities. At the conclusion of a performance, which went with a swing from start to finish. Sir Thomas Beecham was recalled repeatedly and given a wonderful ovation by a most enthusiastic audience. In announcing why he had gone into pictures, Florenz Ziegfeld, famous pro. ducer of “The Follies,” said:—lt is now almost a quarter of a century since, with the conviction and ambition of youth. I decided to give greater beauty and bring more brilliant talent to the j theatre of musical plays. It is with | the same enthusiasm, but with more matured knowledge, that I have concluded to enter the steadily broadening field of pictures, The story of my successes has, I be.lieve, become theatrical, history. . New. convictions call for new ventures. I shall, however,, not abandon my stage productions, nor the bringing out of new stars. The art of the player is the oldest of all the fine arts. It embraces the actual personality of the actor to find full expression. The drama will never die. It cannot be sponged off like chalk on a blackboard. It should benefit the picture industry tu give it the varied ex- 5

perience gained in my all-round activities. $5 M 5-5 A play that is running in New York is built upon the events which occurred one New Year’s Eve in and around a street lunch waggon. The waggon is complete in every respect, from cash register to coffee urns and “ hot dog ” boiler. “ The people who patronise it, the smells that come from it, the chief cook and dish-washer who run it, are true to everything we know about these waggons and a lot we believe,” (writes a New York correspondent); “ but as drama it is no more than a series of sordid pictures. To the waggon come to eat or to chat with the waiter-cook are hard-boiled and sentimental ladies of the streets, pick-poc-kets, dope pedlars, police, plain clothes men. night life habitues and others. One detective is shot down by a ma-chine-gunman. Another is stabbed in the back. Finally the proprietor of the waggon, an Italian dope pedlar, is killed by a boy he had sent to prison. A pickpocket, caught with the bills he has filched from a gambler, has his wrist deliberately broken in punishment. The audience shivers in horror at the cruclt}’, ansi tries quickly to forget it.” Under the heading “Author’s Risk Cash on Own Productions,” a New York writer says:—l have seen four plays this last week and they were all pretty awful. Two were written and produced by their own authors. The sleeping at these was particularly restful. I know it is difficult for many to understand how a man can write a play and then risk his own money in its staging. The fact that he could induce none cf the experienced producers, whose business it is to judge plays, either to buy an interest or interest a financial backer, should, you might reasonably think, discourage any amateur. To the contrary it frequently convinces him that he has a superior type of play. Didn’t the experienced producers refuse this one ? And that one? And didn’t these play? make fortunes? Usually they present such specific historic examples as those of “ Abie’s Irish Rose ” and “ The Lion and the Mouse,” “ Journey’s End ” and “ The Green Pastures.” There is no arguing against these overconfident authors. And this, added to the fact that the very writing of a play induces a kind of self hypnosis, under the influence of which an author becomes completely blinded to the inadequacies of his own work, does the trick. K « *8 Mrs Glover, William C. Macready, Samuel Phelps, Edward Sothcrn, the Kendals and Sir Henry Irving are great names in the history of the British stage (says a writer in the Sydney “Bulletin.”) They never acted in Australia, but some of their descendants did, not always with success. Young Glover, grandson of the famous Mrs Glover (nee Betterton), appeared in Melbourne in the ’sixties in Scotch drama, but like Macready’s son Edward. to whom Barry Sullivan gave a show some years later, Glover lost his . head, or something, and became for a time a mere hanger-on of Melbourne theatres. What became of him and Macready is not known. Samuel Phelps, the younger, was introduced to Sydney in 1874 bv Billy Hoskins, playing the title role to Billy’s Ilawkesh&w in “The Ticket-of-Lcave Man.” He also played Captain Absolute and other juvenile leads in classic comedies, but Sydney would have none of him. Lytton Sothern, son of Edward, the creator of Lord Dundreary, took his father's famous part in Sydney (1877). He also played Surface, Garrick, etc., but pa’s mantle had certainly not fallen on the son. The Kendals sent a son billed as W. 11. Dorrington to appear with the Brough-Boucicault company, and a daughter, Dorothy Grimston, to lead a

J. C. Williamson dramatic company. H t B. Irving, son of the Lyceum knight, toured Australia in 1911 in some of pa’s famous roles.

All the New York drama critics felt complimented last week when they* heard that Miss Barrymore had labelled them “rock men” (writes Percy Hammond in the “New York Herald Tribune”). The name, suggesting strength, stability, grandeur and per* manence, indicated that Mias- Barrymore had reversed her ill opinion of the local actuaries and was recognising them as what they are. “Rock man!” How solid it sounded—an object to cling to in time of peril. Or a steadfast foundation in a Broadway of shifting sands. At last, we thought. Miss* Barrymore has discovered that we arc impregnable, immutable, unscalable and prudential, topped by warning lighthouses and fortified with heavy guns. Dangerous only when dashed sat upon or fallen off of, and as protective to the Drama as Gibraltar te the Motherland, we were pleased that Miss Barrymore bad given us her accolade as such. But Miss Barrymore did not mean the term “rock men” in the way we had hoped. In an alum interview with the clever Mr Sifton, of “The World,” she said with “a smooth loathing” that New York is “infested with a lot of terrible men who write.* “No one used to pay anv attention tn them,” she continued, “but now you pick them up in dentists’ offices. I call them ’rock men’—you know what I mean—the things that creep out from under the rocks, after dark. But managers listen to them and their impertinent wisecracks. One or two of them ought to be shot at dawn!” Shakespeare has been having a goorf run in America this year, and, speaking of the production in . New York of “Romeo and Juliet,” a critic introduces his criticism of the players with the following remarks on the settings: —A lively show, in short; full of rich cobalt-blue, violet, amethystine lights and general glamour; of drum-beats and sword play, and a variety of fresh and unexpected business, in addition to its basic love story. Good showmanship and good Shakespeare, without over-accent in favour of any star, and everything done, I should say, to strengthen and accelerate the general story. A shallow flight of steps had been built across the orchestra! pit, and many of the entrances and exits were made across it, the characters emerging from or descending into the darkness of the pit itself, in the full flight of their dialogue, with a fine, fresh air of natu* ralness and impromptitude. At the very start, a pair of mediaeval drummers come up this way, leading some of the expository characters, their drums rat-tatting as they come. Andthis brisk and unexpected appearance, set against an ingeniously arranged public place in Verona, with a long flight of steps leading up and away from the audience and suggesting, in an idiomatically Italian way, both height and distance—all this, with the rich indigo, blackish and lavender lights splashed about the outskirts of the scene, strikes a note of Renaissance vivacity and splendour, which is carried throughout the play. This was the sort of air—or. at any rate, so the spectator feels, which amounts to the same thing—in which Titian and Leonardo and Paolo Veronese splashed on their paint; a high, bravo air. full of hot colour and striving, love, passion, quick death.