MRS WIGGS’ COMPANY.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 956, 2 July 1908, Page 18

MRS WIGGS’ COMPANY.

It Is only occasionally that Australian audiences have the opportunity of seeing a play interpreted by a company which contains so many originators of the respective parts as does the cast of “ Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.” Several of the prin cipals created their respective studies when the comedy was first produced five years ago in America. Miss Helen Lowell, for example, has played Miss Hazy throughout the whole of that time, and Mr A. W. Maflin has done correspondingly with Deacon Bagsby, while the initial run of the piece has also the benefit of Miss Helene Raymond’s talent as Mrs Eicorn and Argyle Campbell’s briskness as Billy Wiggs. Miss Ada Dwyer, who is Mrs Wiggs, can look even further back than the premoire, for it was on her representations that the comedy was constructed. Like every one of the million people it has made happy, she was charmed with Alice Hegan Rice’s novel. More than that, she saw the great theatrical possibilities in it, and her faith in its stage appeal has been abundantly justified. Mis Lottie Alter (Lovey Mary), Miss Florence Bushby (Miss Lucy), and Mr Richard Allen (Hunkerdunkus Jones) were all in the London production last year. Most of the other members, even if they did not actually originate their characters, have been, long enough in them to claim recognition from that standpoint. Such for example as Mr J. N. Smiley, the sthge manager of the company, who also plays the Sheriff, Mr John Webber, the lean lank and lazy Mr Stubbine and Miss Jennie Reiffarth who comes back once more to play the old German woman, Mrs Schultz, a part in which she excels.