Plays and Players.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XXII, 30 May 1896, Page 627

Plays and Players.

IT is stated that at the time of the opening of the * Trilby ’ Company in Sydney most of the American members had played their parts 390 times.

The Myra Kemble complimentary matinee, at Svdnev Lyceum, was crowded to the top steps everywhere

Few men who write plays have any eloquence in oratory, and most of the men who write plays are en tirely destitute of commanding presence. Henry Arthur Jones is a little man, with a red beard, who looks like a green-grocer. Arthur W. Pinero has the appearance of a bad actor in a cheap company. Victorien Sardou is a small, grotesque man, the personification of aches, pains and dyspepsia. The author of ’ Trilby ’ looks like a priest in a good parish. Henry Guy Carleton is a stocky, square-built fellow who stutters. Augustus Thomas seems like a cross between a prize-fighter and a stage villain. Sydney Rosenfield is an eccentric-looking person who wears eye-glasses and never combs his hair. Clyde Fitch is a ‘naneyfied’ fellow, and Sir Augustus Harns is cocky and intolerable.

An enterprising New York theatre manager, by the way, recently hit on a clever device for filling the boxes from a ‘free list.’ He provided himself with several arms, some of bare wax with a long white glove encircled at the wrist with a brilliant imitation diamond bracelet, and others clad in a black cloth sleeve with shirt cuff, with diamond links and white gloved hand. These were placed in position, protruding on to the cushioned ledge of the boxes nearest the stage from behind a corner curtain to suggest the existence of a well dressed lady or a man in evening dress sitting in the corner of the box facing the stage. Au attendant has to withdraw the arms when the curtain falls and the light is turned on in the auditorium and replace them in a different position directly the next Act begins, -a hen the light is turned down and the illusion is again complete.

Madame Sarah Bernhardt (says an American contemporary; returns to us as attractive and no older than ever before. One of her country-women, who has lately been drawing large audiences to a music-hall, has attempted to cast reflections on Madame Sarah by giving a mathe matical computation of how old she must really be ; but in a case like Madame Sarah’s mathematics are at least misleading. She is no older than her art makes her, and to-day, so far as the audience is concerned, she convinces of her youth as well as, and perhaps better, than she did twenty-five years ago. To be sure, she has the advantage of a slight figure. Age has added no percep tible substantiality to Madame Sarah's proverbial thinness, therefore, when as Izeyl, she clings, fondles, and entwines with the affectionate ardour of youth, there is uo mark, no suspicion of age to spoil the picture. The grace of youth is still hers, the tire of genius is in her blood, and uo matter what her history nor what her eccentricities, Madame Sarah Bernhardt must always remain in our recollections of things artistic, a genius Of the play in which she first appeared, the least said perhaps the better. It is a tale of Christ and the Magdalene put back in scene and time to the realms of Buddha.

Rev. Charles Clarke (says the Bulletin), who has put on a little flesh and added to the fulless of his beautiful voice since his last visit, will give the last of four lectures at Melbourne Town Hall next Saturday (16th) It was hard for the eloquent discourser to appear better than ever, yet he achieved that feat the other evening Mr Clarke has brought a couple of new lectures for this flying trip through Australia, and the new yarns are about equal to the old ones, which age cannot wither, nor custom stale.

The ‘Johnnie’ school of theatrical entertainment in which New York indulges so copiously and for which it pays its English importations so generously, has its latest exemplar in ‘An Artist’s Model,’ at the Broadway Theatre. This is a piece in which singing, dancing, and attractive British femininity figure more than brains or art. In this case the elimination of the two latter elements is carried to a point which makes the whole affair deadly stupid.

Some of the Christchurch leading theatrical amateurs are very busy rehearsing Sardou’s Comedy, ‘A Scrap of Paper,’ which they intend to put on at the Theatre Royal in June in aid of St. Mary’s Home, Addington Mrs 11. E. Marsh («<•« Miss Rose Seager) takes a leading part, which ofcourse means success, and MrsJ. Gibbs, Miss Henry, Messrs Marsh, Alpers, Guise Brittan and some others whose names I have forgotten. Mrs Gibbs is taking a great interest in it, many of the rehearsals being held in her house.

The Wellington Dramatic Students give their services again in the cause of charity, and their performance on Monday evening is in aid of the Society for the Prevention of cruelty to animals. The programme is certainly attractive, and should draw- a good house, ‘ The Chimnev Corner ’ and ‘ Chisselling ’ being the double-itemed playbill. The latter farce is quite new to a Wellington stage, and therefore will not be familiar to any of those likely to be included in the audience. I hear that the Students contemplate the obtaining and producing of • Walker London,’ which has been such a success in London, and would certainly be warmly patronised here by reason of the fame which has come before it.