STAGE GOSSIP.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1312, 17 June 1915, Page 43

STAGE GOSSIP.

“I feel particular satisfaction in playing this part,” remarked Frank Harvey, who is appearing as the young Secret Service officer in “The Man Who Stayed at Home,” the spy play now running at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne. Mr. Harvey was trained for the Navy, having spent four years at Portsmouth Royal Naval College and a year at Devonport. Had he not subsequently failed in the eyesight test he would now be aboard one of His Majesty’s warships. “I have seven cousins in the Navy at sea at the present time,” said Mr. Harvey, “and another relative in the Secret Service. He has had some remarkable adventures, and wrote me recently that the plots and schemes of the spies in England read like yarns spun by a writer of fiction. Those that are shown in ‘The Man Who Stayed at Home’ are as close to the real thing it is possible to get.”

“With the Fighting Forces of Europe,” wlvch is at present touring Australia with phenomenal success, is universally recognised as the finest example of Kinemacolour phonography at present shown in the moving picture world. It is a perfect picture shown through a perfect instrument. There is not a technical defect in the whole of this marvellous three-hour performance, and the manager, Mr. W. J. Shephard, describes it as an exact reproduction of Nature in Nature’s colours. “As a matter of fact,” he says. “ ‘With the Fighting Forces of Europe’ cannot be looked upon as a picture production at all. It is really more like a wonderland of moving oil paintings.”

“From the first line to the last ‘The Parish Priest’ is a charmingly sweet, healthy play.”

“Lying,” said the beautiful chorus girl, haughtily, “is not one of my failures.” “It is not.” agreed the shorn suitor, candidly, “it is one of your successes.”