Plays and Players.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue VIII, 14 August 1897, Page 236

Plays and Players.

NEW ZEALAND is promised a visit from the Flying Jordans, an American Variety Company which is drawing big houses in Australia. Rickards has engaged Marie Lloyd, the English music hall comedienne, to visit the colonies. Auckland playgoers and companies-visiting Auckland will witness a great improvement in the Opera House when all the improvements now being made on the stage and auditorium are completed. Lonnen the inimitable, Miss Lethbridge, the skirt dancer, and Addie Conyers, that charming boy, are coming on a visit to the Colonies. Probasco’s Circus has been doing fairly well in Auckland. The Christchurch Press, writing of the Brongh season, which opened in the City of the Plains last Saturday, says The programme for the entire Brough season should prove eminently satisfactory to all kinds and conditions of playgoers. After Oscar Wilde’s play has been done for two nights, we shall, as stated above, have Pinero’s masterpiece, ‘The Notorious Mrs Ebb smith 1 with Mrs Brough in her great creation of ‘ Agnes,’ a part which has surpassed anything she has played in Australia. A Sydney critic wrote, ‘ Had Mrs Brough created this part in London she would have become world famous.’ After ‘The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith’ we are promised a nightly change of programme for the remaining six nights—' Nancy and Co.,’ ’ A Pair of Spectacles ’ and ‘ In Honour Bound ’ (double bill). ‘ The Passport,’ ‘ Fedora,’ ‘ Niobe,’ and ‘ Dandy Dick’ in the order named. Then farewell to the Broughs! Eight plays in ten nights, and six of them new, is a treat indeed to which we are all looking forward. Miss Hilda Spong, according to the Eta, has had a tempting offer to visit South Africa. She prefers, however, to rest after the run of ‘Two Little Vagabonds,’ and ‘ has engaged a houseboat on the Thames for that purpose.’ Several theatre parties (says our Wellington correspondent) have already been arranged in anticipation of the return of the Brough Company to Wellington next week, the Company being great favourites with Wellington theatre-goers. I hear the two new plays, ‘ Nancy and Co.’and the ‘ Passport,’are exceedingly amusing, and that Mrs Brough is seen at her best in the ‘ Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith,’ being ably supported by Mr Titheradge’s clever representation of the cynical old roue. Rehearsals of the ‘ Mikado ’ continue steadily in Nelson, and no pains are being spared to make this a splendid production—one of the best ever witnessed in that city. Mrs Howie and her co-workers are hard at it, and ‘fan-drills’ are quite the order of the day, and night. The ladies taking part are wearing ‘ Mikado ’ hat bands, which look most effective. Sardou is said to have been so pleased with the London production of ‘ Madame Sans Gene ’ that he sent Sir Henry Irving the inkstand which he used while ■writing the play. Mr George Leitch is back again in London after his long absence in Australia, and is playing a part in Mr Edward Terry's production of ‘ Love in Idleness.’ Tamagno is to get /"240a night in such cities as Frank" fort and Munich. This is, of course, an exceptional price, but that covers practically the whole cost of the production, as the rest of the singers are hired by the year or longer, and the sum paid to the foreign singer usually covers the entire cost of the engagement. It was a long time before Berlin would consent to pay the sum asked by the Italian singer, and it was the last of the German cities to fall into line. Already there are prophecies of failure for such an unusual venture. This price can only be understood with a knowledge of the fact that a fairly good prirna donna can be engaged in Germany for about £f> a month. Never before has any singer in that country received more than Z 200 a night.