WELLINGTON NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1545, 4 December 1919, Page 32

WELLINGTON NOTES.

(By

“Lorgnette.”)

WELLINGTON, December 8

The Allan Wilkie Company are showing to splendid business at the Grand Opera House, and I anticipate that it is a find in opening a real good stock company to tour the Dominion. Mr. Wilkie has got a combination of artists around him that at any odd time he can go from tragedy to comedy, with melodrama thrown in. If New Zealanders want a high-class performance at a fair tariff, now is the time to get in and get busy and help the management out by patronising the show.

From a theatrical point of view, New Zealand will be well catered for during the next three months. On Boxing Night the J.C.W. New Comic Opera Company will open a tour at the Wellington Grand Opera House with “Yes, Uncle!” after which follow revivals of “Going Up,” “Canary Cottage,” “High Jinks,” and “The Only Girl,” or “So Long, Letty.” The Muriel Starr Dramatic Company open at Christchurch on Boxing Night with “The Man Who Came Back,” to be followed by “The Bird of Paradise.” Then we have the Grand Opera Company, the New South Wales State Orchestra and Wirth’s Circus coming along, so that Dominion playgoers have no cause to feel out in the cold.

After a long wait, some three years, we are at last going to have a visit from Wirth’s circus and men-

agerie. Mr. George L. Petersen, the energetic advance courier of the show, arrived in Wellington by the Moeraki. The Dominion tour will commence about December 9, at Wellington, and at the present time Mr. Petersen is busy trying to find a site that will suit all sorts from north to south of the city. The menagerie is to leave Melbourne by the Tahiti and the performers come along by the Manuka. It ought to be an eventful tour, because we have not seen a real circus for some years now.

Mr. Bert Tate, treasurer with the Allan Wilkie Company, is a returned “digger,” having gone through the “stunt” in Flanders without mishap.