GREENROOM GOSSIP.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1409, 26 April 1917, Page 34

GREENROOM GOSSIP.

“The House That Jack Built,” the J. C. Williamson pantomime, is due in Auckland on June 18 for a season extending till the 25th. Thence the company proceed to Wanganui, June 27; Palmerston North June 28 and 29; Napier, June 30 to July 2; Hastings, July 3; Masterton, July 4; Christchurch, July 6 to 12; Oamaru, July 13; Dunedin, July 14 to 19; Timaru, July 20; Wellington, July 23 to August 1. But for Miss Marie Tempest, Edward German’s charming “Nell Gwynne Dances” would never have been written. The brilliant English comedy actress commissioned the composer to write the incidental music for Anthony Hope’s play, “Nell Gwynne,” and the dances were the result.” Mr. Robert Greig, who with Miss Beatrice Holloway, is heading the J. C. Williamson Limited Farce Comedy Company, is a strong advocate of the modern and quiet style of laugh-get-ting. It is not so long ago, he says, that comedians would do almost anything to get a laugh. They would gesticulate and grimace in the most exaggerated fashion. But comedy has undergone wonderful changes in the last few years, and there is more satisfaction, says Mr. Greig, in getting appreciation for a subtlety than for the “sure fire” laughs that any experienced actor can get across to the footlights. “It is a surprising fact that after two and a-half years of war the supply of London theatres is not equal to the demand,” says “The Times.” “At present every playhouse is occupied except the Little, which is being used as a Y.M.C.A. hostel, and Covent Garden, now a Government furniture depository, and another half dozen could be filled without any difficulty.” • • • • Once a learned Harvard professor told a class in playwriting that there was just one man who really knew what the public wants, and that man was George M. Cohan. Cohan, the other day, made the remark that one of his great rules of living and of writing was “not to take life too seriously;” » # * * “I was in the early Bernard Shaw productions,” stated Mr. Graham Browne, discussing the work of the brilliant Irishman. “In those days, when plays were done in holes and corners, the Shaw vogue had not arrived. I was the original boy in ‘You Never Can Tell,’ and was also in the original cast of ‘John Bull’s Other Island’ and ‘The Devil’s Disciple.’ ” Mr. Graham Browne, who is leading man with Miss Marie Tempest at Melbourne Theatre Royal in “The Marriage of Kitty,” has shared for several years Miss Tempest’s comedy triumphs in London. * * * * At a dinner given recently to the Asches and their “Chu-Chu-Chow” company in London, Oscar announced that he had not been able to make the higher drama pay; hence his staging of Oriental melodramas. During the five weeks’ run of “The Virgin Goddess” in London (it lasted three nights in Melbourne) there was not a single paying performance. Laurence Binyon’s “Attila” ran for four weeks and cost £5OOO, and the only Asche Shakespearean productions that paid were “Othello” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” • • • • In George M. Cohan’s sensational mystery farce, “Seven Keys to BaldPate,” now on tour of New Zealand, there is not one moment throughout the entire play that is not unusual, freakish and brilliantly absorbing. Charles Hawtry had all London flocking to see it, and the same has been the case wherever it has been produced. Mr. Fred. Niblo scored one of his greatest Australian successes with this production, and Miss Beatrice Holloway and Mr. Robert Greig created a new comedy record with it in South Africa under the J. C. Williamson banner last year. * * ♦ * W. S. Percy has been booked up for two years by Alfred Butt, the leading English manager since the death of George Edwardes, and is at present playing Dr. Thornes, the principal comedy part in “High Jinks,” in the provinces. • * * * Professor Norwood, of hypnotic interest, has just concluded another of his successful seasons in Wellington. The southern city, by the way, is one of the Professor’s strongholds.

The J. C. Williamson Comedy Company closed its season on Saturday and left at midnight for Lyttelton. They open their South Island tour at Christchurch this (Monday) evening with “Seven Keys to Baldpate.” • <• * * The Daylight Saving Act was distinctly bad for theatres —sunset at 9 p.m. (writes a Sydney correspondent to “Pasquin” in “Otago Witness”). We came back to standard fine last week. The amusement tax seems to be met with a fair amount of “don’t give a hang if it costs a quid” sort of feeling. Theatre prices now resemble Anthony Hordern’s bargain counter sale — late gallery, Is. Id.; early gallery, 2s. 2d.; stalls, 4s. 4d; reserved stalls and circle, 6s. 6d. Talking of prices, do you know that to book a seat for any J.C.W. or Tait theatre for any Saturday night costs Bs. It’s simply marvellous how the country stands it.” ♦ * * ♦ Barry Lupino is said to have done nothing so convincing as his little Eddie Kettle in J. and N. Tait’s success “Very Good Eddie,” the young man who makes matrimonial confusion worse confounded by his amusing capers during a Hudson River trip. It is interesting to note that this is the first time for many years that Mr. Lupino has not appeared in pantomime. Up to now he has appeared in 26 of these extravaganzas in England, Australia and America, so he now feels that his advent in musical comedy is something in the nature of breaking a habit. Ben and John Fuller, Junr., are trying to refrain from saying “I told you so,” says a Melbourne paper. All the same, the temptation is great. When they first contemplated a grand opera season, “the man who knows all” told them that cheap prices and grand opera did not go together. The same individual said that the people who wanted music would pay well for it. Now the Fullers hold up against these arguments: box office receipts which go to show that the family circle at two shillings a seat was filled more often than any other part of the house. Miss Elma Royton, who played Blanny Wheeler in “Fair and Warmer” at Melbourne Theatre Royal, was asked how she managed to give such a lifelike impersonation of the exhilarated Blanny in the lively comedy. “Pure observation,” she replied. “I must admit to having been a teetotaller all my life, but I have lived a great deal in hotels. If we put a girl on the stage who was in reality slightly elevated, she wouldn’t be the least bit funny. It is as if you put a cabman on the stage to play a cabman. He would not interest any audience. An actor, on the other hand, can create a universal character whom all would recognise as a cabman, and he would hold the attention. It is the same thing with intoxication. One rather ‘idealises’ the peculiarities of the person a little beyond herself, in the stage representation, and it passes for what it is meant to be.”