Plays and Players

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XII, 20 March 1897, Page 350

Plays and Players

THE American Dramatists* Club declines to admit women to membership, but it gave a reception the other night to women whose plays had been acted. Among those invited were Frances Hodgson, Burnett, Margaret Merrington, Martha Morton, Madeline Lucette Ryley, Alice E. Ives, Mary E. Stone, Lillian Lewis, and Ada Lee Bascom. Fanny Cerito, the ballet dancer, the last survivor of the famous pas de quatre of 1845 under Lumley’s management at London, the other members of which were Taglioni, Fanny Elssler and Carlotta Grisi, was one of the persons who turned out to see the Czar when he was in Paris. She is only 75 years of age. Lumley stopped the fight for precedence in that quartet by saying that the oldest should begin. Charles Arnold is going to tour the colonies with a play which he is writing in collaboration with David Christie Murray. Williamson and Musgrove are now engaging fresh English talent for their New Opera Company. Aucklanders are looking forward to the appearance of George Rignold on the 20th inst. The opening piece of the season is Henry V., and it is said to be a very fine production. Shakespearean drama is not over popular in the colonies either with managers or the public, but according to all accounts Mr Rignold’s Henry V. has been a brilliant exception. The Pollards have had bumper houses in Auckland, ‘ Boccaccio ’ holding the stage for a week. On Wednesday * Nell Gwynne ’ was produced, and on Monday last ‘ Rip Van Winkle' was staged. ‘ Falka ’ was billed for Saturday, but ten minutes before the curtain rose Miss Marion Mitchell was taken ill, and Tom Pollard had to put on another opera. He gave the audience their choice, and in a quarter of an hour after they had decided on ‘ The Gondoliers ’ the house was listening to the well-known music of Sullivan. Carl Hertz opens in Christchurch on the sth of next month. Frohman’s American Dramatic Company leaves ’Frisco on the Ist of next month for Australia under engagement to Messrs Williamson and Musgrove. It is said that ‘The Derby Winner,’ Bland Holt’s great production, cost /’z.ooo to put on in Sydney. Little Ellaline Terry, a niece of Ellen Terry, was to have made her debut in London the other day, but she was prevented by the authorities, as she was under the age at which children are allowed to act in England. A travelling journalist who saw Miss Ellen Terry at Monte Carlo has confided to his readers that he saw the charming actress having a little flutter at the tables, where also he found Mdlle. Christine Nilsson ‘ more intent upon the game than upon purely philosophical speculation.’ When a certain dignitary of the church was asked what was the duty of an archdeacon he answered that he didn’t quite know, but he thought probably it was to fulfill archidiacoual functions. Maybe the duty of a public writer is to give as much publicity as possible to public people. Buttheir little weaknesses —well, really — Ibsen, says Mr Sherard in a recent article in the Humanitarian, is a pessimist by theory and a misanthrope in practice:—‘ During six weeks I saw him almost every day, for he paid two daily visits at fixed hours to the hotel at which I was staying, and on no single occasion did I ever see him in any company. He was always alone, whether sitting behind his glass in the little inner room at the Grand Hotel reading the Norwegian papers, or perambulating the Karl Johann’s Gade with his hands behind his back. And as he is out of doors, so is he also in his house in the Victoria Terrasse, a solitary man, manifesting a real dislike for family life. He never visits his one son, Dr. Sigurd Ibsen, who is almost as great a recluse as his father. Indeed, when the son married one of the daughters of Bjornstjerne Bjiirnson, Ibsen kept away from the wedding. This sadness, this want of sociability on his part, struck me as so abnormal on the part of a Norwegian—for the Norwegians are in the main jovial and fond of society—that I could not help expressing my surprise on the subject to Bjiirnson, whose neighbour at table I was at a dinner. “But, Ibsen,” cried Bjiirnson, “is not a Norwegian at all. He comes of a Scotch family, and that explains his Calvinism, his despairing views on life and on men. It is indeed a grievance to the Norwegians that this export trade of pessimism in Christiania should have been founded by a foreigner.” I should describe him as a typical misanthrope by natural tendency. His domestic life has not been a happy one, and woman has woven but few celestial roses into his life. In his “ Master Builder” he expressed what were his ambitions as a young man - ambitions which he has scarcely been able to realise.’