Greenroom Gossip.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1035, 6 January 1910, Page 17

Greenroom Gossip.

OLD FRIENDS EEMCMBEK. ■The dfiristhias season, now ended, brought somepleasant reminders of absent friends to the Editor of this journal and members of the staff. The first toi arrive was a dainty little photo, conveying Christmas greetings from Beatrice Day; Similar greetings are also to hand from Harold Ashton, “Dick Stewart and “Bert” Royal; from Rupert Clarke and Clyde Meyhell of the Melbourne Theatre Royal, from Wilton Welch, of the Palace Theatre, Sydney, announcing the “first production of an entirely new play entitled “A Life of Happiness” (Act I. A Merry Xmas. Act 11. A Happy New Year. Act 111. Health, Wealth and Prosperity), the whole production by special request of Wilton Welch”; from Fred and Nellie Graham (nee Dent) at present in Sydney; from G. L. Petersen (Wirth’s Circus), now in Adelaide and from Geoffrey Nye (Sydney). The first message opened by the Editor this year comes from 28 Vereker Road, West Kensington, and conveyed from “Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lauri, Cicely and Teddy” the “best of good wishes for health and happiness throughout the coming year.”

MR. BERT GILBERT. An interview with Mr. Bert Gilbert will appear in these cloumns next week, with a new photograph of the distinguished comedian, who is now nightly delighting Auckland theatregoers. ■ • ♦ « • FRANK STERLING STAGS MANAGER, Mr. Frank Sterling, the stagemanager for J. C. Williamson’s New Comic Opera Company, is a young man with an old head upon a pair of particularly square shoulders. It is the province of the S.M. to smile upon all occasions, be invariably cool and posess the temper of a battalion of Arch Angels. If you ask Mr. Sterling the particular heaven-sent gift most valuable to a manager of a stage he will tell you “Tact.” Of all businesses, that of the stage director is, perhaps, the most worrying. There are always lurking easily at hand a combination of untoward circumstances ready to hop out and offer battle to the finest scheme organised by any astute stage manager. Mr. Sterling is favoured in possessing a large proportion of that savoir faire so supremely necessary for his responsible position. An actor of distinction also, Mr. Sterling has made several pronounced successes—his recent performance of Rockel in “Monsieur Beaucaire” with Mr. Julius Knight being an especially brilliant example. Mr. Sterling’s stage career has known no other management than that of the J. C. Williamson firm, and

those who witness the admirably executed business throughout the whole of “The King of Cadonia” can judge what a valuable adjunct to a big enterprise the services and knowledge of a first-rate stage director is. * * * • A NEW ZEALAND PLAYWRIGHT. “Love in a Tangle” is (says a contemporary) one of the two plays selected for production from 112 pieces by the London Playwriters’ Association, which exists for the encouragement of unacted authors. This play went first to a regular manager, and his “reader” selected it out of 300 pieces. So the play would seem to , be a work of great promise. The author is Mr. H. B. Vogel—a stockbroker—and the son of Sir Julius Vogel, for many years Prime Minister of New Zealand. MASTER BERT %TICHOLSON. In the re-organisation scheme for 'Pollard’s Opera Company, Master Bert Nicholson, the boy comedian, has returned to Sydney. It is stated that he will probably leave the stage for a year or two. AN EDWARD LAURI STORY. When Mr. Edward Laurl’s kindly greetings came to hand the writer was reminded of a story he read some little time back of the great humorist entertainer’s treatment of an Amerl-