“BELLE OF NEW YORK”

Wanganui Chronicle, 31 May 1950, Page 6

“BELLE OF NEW YORK”

Good Work By Producer, i Conductor and Scenic Artist | Miss Eva Moore, who has shown | great ability as a producer in Wanganui on previous occasions, has made the most of producing “The Belie ot New York,” which resumed the second portion of its six-night season at the Opera House last night. Tops in acting to Arthur Vernon, Fayette Rountree, Beverley Jacobsen, Shirley Smith, Fred Phillips and Ray Stanford. Tops in singing to Betty Hodge and Shirley Smith. This is a play which has a gooa story, and has settings which lend themselves to good production. It is a play set in New York, a New York that changes swiftly from the interior of a millionaire’s mansion to Pell Street, the heart of Chinatown. Then it goes from the sluminess of a great city to the vivacity and colour of the beach at Narragansett Pier. In those settings Hugh Morton has written the story of the son of a multi-millionaire who falls in love with a Salvation Army lassie, whose duties take her into the slums of New York, and Morton has arranged the appealing lyrics required of such a story to the music of Gustave Kerker. Mr E. O. Schnack, whose work for the society has been of such value since he first became musical director, in 1947, for “The Vagabond King,” has again achieved a great deal. The chorus work in “The Belle” is one of its outstanding features. In fact, chorus work in all the recent, productions of the society has been of a high order, and credit for that, has been due in very large measure to Mr Schnack’s ability as conductor. Not only that, he has worked steadily towards achieving that blend between orchestra and chorus, and particularly between orchestra and principals, which is so necessary in shows staged by amateur societies. There is a tendency in these modern times to miss the strong, resonant voices in the vocal numbers featured in days gone by. The Opera House itself is some handicap, because it is difficult to throw the voice from that particular stage to where it should be heard, in that far upflung back seat of the dress circle, or to that hidden row, underneath the belly of the circle which, in days of yore, Wanganui knew as its “pit.” Professional artists, even of the vitality of a Peter Dawson, have said that it is hard to sing to the back of the Opera House from the footlights, let alone from away upstage. That, and the fact that the younger generation does not appear to have the same vitality in its singing as of old, has suggested use of the microphone and public address system to improve the delivery of words to those in the back seats. That, however, would rob the stage of much of its naturalness, and would certainly rob the young people of today of the challenge that has been offered them —to improve the vitality and resonance of their singing. Betty Hodge is setting a lead in that respect in her vocal numbers as “The Belle of New York.”

It says much for the producer and musical director that they have striven in that direction, so that the story is told to all in the building, and not just to the orchestral stalls. The fact that one critic came away and said he did not hear the orchestra was, in itself, a compliment, because the orchestra has been blended to accompany and encourage, rather than to dominate and drown. Whatever musical show is presented, it must of necessity rely for much on the orchestra, and, as in “The Belle of New York,” the orchestra is modulated to the task of accompanying rather than dominating. The singing of the chorus in the finale to the first act of this show has beaten anything yet. It surely must have lifted the cobwebs from memory and brought back to that old Opera House much of the glory for which it was meant when the hands and labour of its builders set about their task. It was good last night to see the young people of the city coming into their own, and flinging back to their critics appropriate answer to destructive criticism. It is so easy to criticise, so hard to do’ And the scenes in “The Belle of New York” have presented Mr Ces Cornish, an artist whom the society has discovered, with great opportunity. His Pell Street scene is very realistic, the brush having captured a lifelike perspective. There is one thing about the appearance of the characters in that scene, however, that two of the chorus stand in the middle of the street, as it were, rather than on a corner. It would surely be unnatural to stand in the middle of a street in New York, even in Chinatown, for very long. “The Belle of New York” is to be repeated tonight and finally tomorrow night. The curtain rises each night at 7.50, not at 8 o’clock.