AMONG OTHER THINGS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 16 (Supplement)

AMONG OTHER THINGS

BUBBLE AND SQUEAK " TWO GOOD COMEDIANS. (By Le Caqaeteur.) Hanner Swaffer says that if you have mastered the trick of play-writ-ing, you van write plays very quickly, if you have the plot. Yes. And if you have some ham you can have some ham and eggs, if you have the eggs A critic who sought an interview with an actress, was told by an attendant that she was round behind. Personalities ot this description are to be deprecated. Says an actress in .a stage journal: ••Beauty is only skin deep.” Sausage lovers will be up in arms about this. ♦ * * * Those who partook of Bubble and Squeak” had much to say that was complimentary concerning the chefs who concocted this tasty dish, and it is to be regretted that the menu for the week should have been so crammed with good things as to rob it of juuvh of the patronage it woulg otherwise have enjoyed. Seldom have amateurs acquitted themselves so admirably. Evelyn Wright enhanced an already established reputation as a dancer and ballet mistress, and showed herself in a new light as an actress of Mme ability. The good taste and artistry displayed by Cecil Izard more than compensated for this lady’s lack of stagecraft; she was. however, a trifle too restrained, and even forgot To smile until a minor accident to a shoulder strap vaused an involuntary beam which might well have been followed bv others. Marilyn Magill’s capable hands were rather too full to attend to everything. but someone might have dropped a hint to the “walking gentlemen, thorns ladies and others, 11 that makeup should not lie too liberally applied. One ladv ballerina appeared to be suffering from a form of exophthalmic goitre, while the complexion of a member of the male persuasion must have indicated to undertakers in the audience. that business showed a likelihood of picking up. In the main, however, considering that no fewer than twentyseven scenes were enacted, everything went swimmingly, and all the dainty darners, from the two delightful infants who tripped through a gavotte to the ballet girls who danced, so it seemed. for the sheer fun of the thing, reallv earned the applause that was jjiven so freely. Jim Scott’s position a« leading romedian is evidently so assured that bo one seems inclined to draw him on ©ne side and whisper confidentially That he has yet quite a lot to learn. In “Underwherc” he was badiv cast and appeared so uncomfortable in evening dress and monwle as to suggest that he had recently been blistered. Later, with these garments shed, when he descended to sheer bu.foonery, he seemed much happier, and so. incidentally, did the audience. In •‘Bubble and Squeak” his elocution and delivery were faulty and only Ms funniest lines moved the audience Jo laughter. Funny lines to a good Comedian are not really necessary. George Robey made so much of toe simple phrase “So that s it is it?” that it was on everyone’s lips: weeks after Robey’s show bad completed its run, this expression was used by an actor in a new drama and caused a sudden explosion of laughter which robbed the scene of its effect. The essence of low comedy is exaggeration; Robey realised this and accentuated his eyebrows in su\?h a manner as to produce that expression of surprise which moves an audience to laughter without a word being spoken. Jim Scott might experiment on his mobile features to his advantage as a comedian. It did not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that some of the lesser luminaries who appeared during the interludes were making a first appearance; they seemed astonished to find themselves on the stage and looked rather like rabbits surprised while lunching off a lettuce Men, of course, lack the natural grace of women, and also their happy knack of seeming quite at ease. Stage deportment is not easy to acquire; that ’charming and accomplished actress. Marie Tempest confesses that it took her twenty years to learn how to sit down gracefully. Poise comes with confidence, and when these embryo actors have trodden the boards a few more times they will find that their tongues no longer seem too large, and that they have only two hands after all. » » * ♦ Can anyone imagine a mor* perfectly cast actor than Gordon Harker, whose •clever portraits of Cocknev types lend so much humour to the screen versions of Edgar Wallace's j plays? Though unknown to New Zealanders until quite recentlv. Harker has for some years been a favourite on the London stage : in Patrick Mac Gill’s war play “Suspense.” which differed from “Journey’s End” only in that the rankers were the protagonists, Gordon Harker scored a veritable triumph as Scruffy, a cheerful soul .