HIS MAJESTY’S.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1383, 26 October 1916, Page 32

HIS MAJESTY’S.

“PEG O’ MY HEART.” J. AND N. TAIT’S PRODUCTION. On Saturday next, October 28, Messrs. J. and N. Tait will stage at His Majesty’s Theatre “Peg o’ My Heart,” Hartley Manners’ brilliant and successful comedy, which has been running in London for some two years at one theatre. It ran for 604 nights in New York, and the author’s wife, Miss Laurette Taylor, the original “Peg,” played the part no less than 1400 times before being compelled to relinquish it by sheer fatigue. “Peg o’ My Heart” is such a wonderfully homely, heartfelt story.” In this way Miss Sara Allgood, the leading lady of J. and N. Tait’s new comedy, points out the truth that

has made for the success of the piece in Sydney and Melbourne, as ' in the United States of America and in England. “The sentiment of it seems to grip and hold those who see it; to go home with them at their firesides and when little bits of the play flit across their memories a soft gentle smile comes to their faces,” added Miss Allgood. “It 'is a play that becomes intimate. The audiences live in it just as much as I do, and I can assure you that I always do. Take the name of my part in the cast, for instance, Peg O’Connell. You never hear anybody call it that, and it is quite a rarity to see me referred to in the press as Peg O’Connell. It is too formal. Everybody says Peg or Peg o’ My Heart. So it must be taken for granted, too, that the very poetry of the title has meant a great deal towards the play’s popularity. I am confident,” she says, “that the comedy would be a success anywhere

where English is understood. It is not so much that the play is technically great, but it is such a blessed relief from the problem plays, from the type of comedy-drama that dissects every act and word of the sinning woman, from the frilly, frothy stuff of musical comedy, and from the awful mediocre matter of much modern melodrama. I find new delights in its every performance.”