DUNEDIN.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1297, 4 March 1915, Page 37

DUNEDIN.

(From Our Dunedin Correspondent.) February 27. The best news of the week is the denmte announcement of the re-open-ing of permanent vaudeville at the Prmcess Tneatre. Ocher announcements have been made in this connection, but they have anticipated events which have never materialised. This time we are promised the real thing. In any case, transient vaudeville opens on March 1 with a company headed by Henri French, the versatile artist, who is a show in himself. Manager Crome, who looks after both Christchurch and Dunedin houses in the Fuller-Brennan interests, has returned from the city which is called Cathedral to this city, which is called “Scotch,’’ to make way for the fly.ng vaudevillians oepning on Monday. By the way, I should mention that Mrs. Crome, who is as good a manager as most men, looks after the Dunedin Princess while Mr. Crome is engaged in Christchurch. Edgar Warwick, Sydney Mannering and those responsible for the “Court Cards,” are well pleased with their Dunedin season. They had been told of direful things that awa.ted them here, but their pleasures were threefold when nothing happened save consistently good business r.ght up to the end of the season, which sad happening—the end of the season, not the good business—occurred on Tuesday of this week. Mr. Jack O’Sullivan, the business manager, informed me that it was intended to play return seasons in each of the principal centres. The “Court Cards” dropped down to Invercargill on Wednesday, and played a full hand in the Southland capital the same evening. Gore is good for one night, and the company pass through Dunedin, playing Timaru (return) and Ashburton en route to Wellington. A tour of the West Coast is also prom.sed. Peter Dawson, the eminent baritone, arrived and conquered on Saturday night. His first concert, given in the Garrison Hall on Saturday, was an artistic success. On Monday Peter Dawson was to have given his second concert, but contracting a severe cold he was compelled, much against h.s will, to cancel that evening’s performance. On Tuesday night he had sufficiently recovered io be able to make his re-appearance, and it was with regret that the audience allowed him to depart. The Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, as you have been advised, were re-called to Australia at the last moment, necessitating the cutting down of the Christchurch season and the cutting out altogether of the Dunedin and Invercargill visits. We in the South are getting quite used to these disappointments, but the public is tak.ng it out in pictures. The movies, indeed, have been the stock amusement since the war, and it is going to be a hard battle to get the public to pay more than 6d. or one shilling for other entertainments. Mr. Charles Knight advises that the “Babes in the Wood” pantomime, under the Willoughby management, will definitely open its New Zealand tour at Timaru on March 26. The Dunedin season commences on Easter Saturday. Mr. Stanley Grant comes across as business manager. The capital for another new picture

theatre in Princess Street was oversubscribed in a few hours. A start will be made shortly with the erection of the building. Mr. Bert Bennet, of this city, who started the Plaza Pictures in George Street, and recently sold out with a profit, has gone to Palmerston North, where he has already established another picture show and got together a syndicate for the erection of a new continuous house.