AUSTRALIAN HAPPENINGS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1138, 1 February 1912, Page 18

AUSTRALIAN HAPPENINGS.

What constitutes enjoyment has been so often the subject of dispute that any light can be thrown upon it should be welcomed. To see a crowd of red-eyed women emerging from a theatre, as they do nightly from the Criterion, Sydney, where Ethel Irving is appearing in “Dame Nature,” and to hear them individually avow that they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, seems to argue that happiness is not an essential condition to enjoyment. A couple of days after the Sydney premiere of this .play, a woman remarked that she had never enjoyed anything so much as “Dame Nature,” and that she had had a splitting headache ever since; while one night during the past week a man in the stalls, who had been steadily mopping his eyes throughout the second act, turned to a woman tittering behind him, and remarked severely, “If you don’t like the play, please do not interfere with other people’s enjoyment of it.”

Saturday night saw the first production in Australia at the Theatre Royal, of Haddon Chambers’ comedy-

drama, “Passers-By.” Stamped with the hall-mark of success achieved by lengthy runs in England and America, where 'the piece is still dielighting playgoers, “Passers-By” will be presented by J..C. Williamson, Ltd., with all the advantages of a magnificent cast and completeness of staging and mounting. The new play has a fine plot, cleverly written, the characters are vividly lifelike, and there is a “human” atmosphere about it that gives it a wide appeal to all classes of playgoers.

A second Gertie Millar part has fallen to Miss Blanche Browne in the title role of “The Quaker Girl” at Her Majesty’s;, Sydney, and. again the charming actress has achieved an unqualified success. After playing Mary Gibbs for sixteen months the opportunity to be someone else must have come as a great relief, notwithstanding the fact that Miss Browne states that she could have gone on playing it for ever. The part of the Quaker Girl, however, she finds every bit as attractive, and hopes that she may not be called upon to change her stage identity for another year at least. Judging by the enthusiasm with which the new musical comedy is being received in Sydney, there seems to be every prospect of Miss Browne’s wish being fulfilled.