Plays and Players.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XIX, 7 November 1896, Page 16

Plays and Players.

• THE GONDOLIERS.’ THIS evening (Tuesday) the Auckland Amateur Opera Club give their first production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera, ‘ The Gondoliers.’ As we are just going to press we are unable to include a notice of the performance in this issue. Next week, however, we anticipate we shall have a good deal to say of the piece, for rumour whispers that the principals and choruses are exceedingly well qualified to do justice to the composer and librettist. For the dresses and the scenery of the piece we have no fears, for both have been under the superintendence of capable gentlemen, and no expense has been spared. It is in respect to the acting and singing that we must reserve our judgment, but while doing so we think our readers will agree with us that, however the amateurs bear themselves on the stage, they look well in their stage dresses, as represented in our photos, appearing on another page of this number.

May Pollard has gone to India under engagement to coach a juvenile opera company.

No one accuses Mr Tree, says an English critic, of regarding ‘ Trilby ’as a great moral drama. Indeed, he has rather weakly tried to parry possible reproaches on the subject by Shakespeare at matinees. Mr Alexander’s worst enemy would hardly assert that he intended ‘ The Prisoner of Zenda ’ to do anything more than to furnish an excellent evening’s entertainment. Wilson Barrett would not, perhaps, feel hurt if it were suggested that he thought ‘ The Sign of the Cross ’ a title which would attract the great profitable middle classes to the unaccustomed theatre. ‘Each of these gentlemen knewquite well what he was doing when he produced his piece, and all the actor-managers with intellectual yearnings and all the dramatists will have noted the results of the undertakings.’ Actors are said to be a long-lived race.

Sardou has been credited with many bright bon mots, but there is none that for trenchant truth surpasses his criticism of Fanny Davenport, after seeing her go over a scene in one of his plays. ‘She doesn’t act,’ said the great dramatist, ‘ she suffers.’

Ellen Terry is reported to be suffering with an extreme nervousness which may render her early appearance on the stage impossible. Her always highly nervous temperament is said to have weakened her so much that she finds difficulty in controlling her eyes.

Sir Henry Irving has contracted with J. I. C. Clarke, a New York journalist and dramatist, to write him an American play, presenting George Washington as the central figure. He wants to personate the first President.

There was one occasion when Sir Henry Irving received from one of the supernumeraries of the Lyceum an answer which seemed to satisfy him. It was the man’s duty to say simply, ‘ The enemy is upon us,’ which he uttered at rehearsal in a poor, whining way. ‘ Can't you say it better ?’ shouted Irving. ‘ Repeat it as I do.’ And he gave the words with dignity, with all his well-known dramatic force. ‘lf I could say it like that,’ replied the man, ‘ I shouldn’t be working for 25 shillings a week.’ ‘ls that all you get?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘ Well, then, say it as you please.’

Graphic representations of life and death among Arctic voyagers, embodied in a play called ‘ Under the Polar Star,’ were received with delight by a turbulent multitude at the Academy of Music, says the New York Sun. Probably no noisier approval had ever been given to a stage exhibition. The first of these scenes was on the deck of a ship, aboard of which was a party of explorers seeking to reach the North Pole. The vessel was caught between icebergs and crushed. In the next scene the imperiled persons were shown in winter quarters on the ice, with their broken ship a wreck, which was finally burned. A third view disclosed the ill-fated beings freezing and starving on an ice floe in the open sea. The scenic quality of these spectacles was excellent. They occupied all the space of the Academy’s big stage, they were artistically pictorial, and the illusions of light, fog, snow, ice and water were often well-nigh perfect. The spectators were roused to frantic enthusiasm, and ‘Under the Polar Star,’ having been placed in exactly the right theatre for the purpose, is bound to have a great success with the populace.

Twenty members of a Turin theatrical company have sued the critic of a daily paper. La Patria, on account of his criticism of a performance of a drama by Altieri, the great Italian dramatist. He had headed his article, ‘ A Crime Upon Vittorio Alfieri,’ and severely censured the artists for badly dealing with that master work. The actors claim that this was slandering their reputation,

•nd that he had insulted their artistic honour. They won their suit, the critic being condemned to pay a small fine in each case.