AMERICAN COMIC OPERA IN LONDON.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XII, Issue 716, 26 November 1903, Page 20

AMERICAN COMIC OPERA IN LONDON.

David Garrick went to Wycherley’s “Country Wife” for the plot of the “Country Girl,” and having fumigated or disinfected the original, he was able to make a very decent comedy of his borrowed material. Mi' Stanislaus Strange has in turn gone to Garrick’s “Country Girl,” and having got rid of the comic element he represents the skeleton in the form of an alleged comic opera. There was some excuse for Garrick’s bowdlerisation (says a London critic), but none for the American playwright’s handling of the story. Dolly Varden makes a pretty name for a comic opera, but the name is so closely associated with another type of character and literary epoch as to be misleading in its present connection. The Dolly Varden of Dickens is' as different from Mr Stange’s heroine as this heroine is different from Peggy. The real Peggy is a sweet and humorous tomboy set in a frame of delightful comedy scenes. The modern Dolly is a scheming bit of galvanised femininity, who masquerades' in seventeenth century costumes, and converses in unmitigated Americanese. There is a “ Dolly Varden ” refrain which would have been much better appreciated if the composer had been more meagre in his repetitions of it, for before the performance concluded the audience were, to use an Americanism, full up of the tune,, and their chief desire was to get away from it. The Americans are a great people for freezing on to an air, and doing' it to death —they would almost seem incapable of carrying two tunes in their heads at the same time. I remember seeing Miss Marie Tempest in a comic opera in New York some twelve years ago, in which one everlasting refrain was played and replayed, sung and resung, through the entire evening. I don’t remember the name of the piece or anything about it, except this refrain of “ To-mor-row is St. Anne’s Day,” to which I allude, and if I don’t sing it on my deathbed t won’t be because I have forgotten it.

Says the latest New York “ Dramatic Mirror” : —“ May Grant, a Boston youngwoman. went on the stage a little over a year ago for the express purpose of travelling, and in that way endeavoured to find her brother, George Grant, who left his home in Boston during the SpanishAmerican war in 1898 and had not been heard from since. He was a student at Cornell College at the time, and enlisted in the army against his father’s wishes. The young man recognised a photograph of his sister last Tuesday night among several others of ‘ The Girl from Dixie ’ Company, which was playing at the Garrick Theatre, Chicago. He met his sister inside the theatre and agreed to go home with her. She obtained a leave of absence, and last Thursday they boarded a train for Boston.”

Judging by the newspaper notices that the Sydney press lavished on the railway scene in “ Man to Man, ’ the real of the Fitzmaurice Gill Company is old Bill Renno— . 1 That old Bill Renno is the star, It’s really very plain— Such was his engine-uity With that ere blooming tram. * * ’ * Alfred Hill, composer of “ Tapu,” the Maori opera, to be played some time m the future by the Royal Comics, can . be sarcastic at times. Once at a musical evening in Wellington a lady, who was not the best of singers, told him that she had been requested to sing a balad from “ Tapu.” You don’t know how frightened I am,” she said. “ Not half so frightened as I am,” replied the composer. * * «• * Mr Arthur Lissant, of the Royal Comics, is (says the “ Newsletter’) a Phil. May hiding under a bushel, as Ins pen and ink sketches reveal him as a caricaturist of the first water. He is a gifted musician, artist, actor and scholar, and with it all mixes a most delightful vein of Bohemianism. , * * * Mr Frank Thornton’s wife died in England just a week before her husband reached home. Two of their daughters were away with the provincial touring Companv. They also were unable to reach their mother before she passed away. » * * ♦ Rumour hath it that Miss Rose MusMusgrove forfeited her father’s allowance the moment she set foot upon the stage. This may or may not be true, but, any way, on her own mi/music merits as an exponent of the Thespian art she will novar need to worry for want of work, as she is a most gifted and conscientious artist. •» * * * Mr Joseph Leiter, who engineered the o-reat but unsuccessful wheat corner in Chicago in 1898, and was the largest individual holder of wheat in the history of the trade, is at present in New York superintending the stage management of the panic scene in the new play entitled “ The Pit,” which has been dramatised from the novel of the same name written by the late Mr Frank Norris, the author of “ The Pit.” Mr Leiter, who is 35 years of age, is the brother of Lady Curzon.