A LIVE STREAK OF “LIGHTNIN’."

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1564, 15 April 1920, Page 32

A LIVE STREAK OF “LIGHTNIN’."

MISS DIANA WILSON. There must always be a woman in it to stimulate interest in a play. That goes without saying. So next to Bill Jones in “Lightnin’ ” comes the fascinating young dancer and divorcee who vamps the judge. It needs to be someone of extra special charms and allurements to hold that position, which explains why Miss Diana Wilson was chosen to fill the role. With the gift of exuding vitality. she has that sense of comedy, too; which enables her to play her cajolery wiles with an amusingly exaggerated emphasis that gives her a sure individual score. Her own deep expressive voice she sacrifices for the resultant laughter. This young English actress with the junoesque stature and graceful carriage,, has brains to set off her beauty, and it’s plain to see that she does not despise the value of dress as part of the stock-in-trade for inveigling the unwary. Vide “Lightnin’ ” for confirmation. Her first entrance is made in a light tan cloth frock richly embroidered in soft brown chenille and topped with a cavalier cape in similar design. Then she is seen in a decollette frock of flame-coloured velvet strikingly entwined with venetianblue charmeuse and draped in long sinuous lines. In the court scene she looks enchanting in a voluminous cape of black satin adorned with vivid flame tassels, revealing a one-piece frock of black charmeuse and coppery gold-traced satin. With this she wears a smart black straw hat bunched in front with narrow loops of ribbon.

Miss Wilson, to try and quench her early desire for a stage career, was sent by hex- parents for a holiday in New York. .There she met Isidora Duncan, the famous classic dancer, and appeared with her in a great Grecian production. Subsequently the King of Greece presented Isidora Duncan with an island in the Aegean Sea. where she was to take her pupils and found a new colony that would be symbolic of beauty and poetry. “It was an inspiration and an education to know this great purist,” said Miss Wilson, “and I was keen to go with her, but relinquished this Arcadian scheme in favour of an invitation

to accompany Miss Ellen Terry to London. And she has been an adviser to me ever since, watching my career with loving interest.” It was while studying Shakesperian roles on Miss Terry’s suggestion that she was given a small part in “Sealed Orders” at Wyndham’s, and later was engaged for significant roles in Somerset Maugham’s “Caroline,” and Barrie’s “A Kiss for Cinderella” and “Seven Women.” She also played a promin-

ent part in “Her Dearest Friend,” written by Miss Rosemary Rees, the New Zealand dramatist. She was also engaged by Grossmith and Lauriilard as leading lady for the Australasian production of “Chu Chin Chow,” but other contracts have intervened, and it looks as if her eight months already spent with the J. C. Williamson management will stretch out over a good many more. To watch good acting is one of her keenest joys, and making up is a craze with her, “so if all else fails I can be a lightning change artist,” she says.