WELLINGTON NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1578, 22 July 1920, Page 30

WELLINGTON NOTES.

(By

“Lorgnette.”)

WELLINGTON, July 19. Messrs. J. and N. Tait, in conjunction with Messrs. Bailey and Grant, open a tour of the Dominion at the Grand Opera House on Wednesday evening with the pantomime “Mother Hubbard.” The extravaganza is in two acts of twenty scenes, and will be presented on the same lavish scale as staged in Melbourne and Sydney. The management claim to have got together a combination of artists equal to anything ever seen in New Zealand. Barry Lupino plays the Dame, and Jack Cannot will appear as her husband. The English Pierrots opened their Wellington season in the Town Hall Concert Camber on Saturday evening last to a packed audience, which was most enthusiastic over the fare provided. The entertainment is bright and clean, being free from any semblance of vulgarity, and contains plenty of originality and charm. The Pierrots are in for a good season. Mr. Charles M. Berkeley has wired me that the South Island tour of the “Sleeping Beauty” pantomime is turning out as big a success as the Wellington season, and that is going some, because the Wellington season was a record-breaker. Mr. Harald Bowden has completed all arrangements for the Dominion tour of the “Mother Hubbard” pantomime.

J. and N. Tait regretfully announce that the brilliant Russian pianist, Moiseiwitsch, will not visit New Zealand as originally arranged. His sensational success in Australia has already caused too long an extension of his* visit, and arrangements made prior to his departure from America must be rigidly adhered to, in spite of pleading cables from J. and N. Tait to his American managers. However, he has promised to come back in the near future, and J. and N. Tait promise that he will then visit New Zealand.

Hayakawa’s next release is “The Tong Man,” a. picture that lifts the veil from Frisco’s Chinatown and sheds a lot of light on the Oriental underworld of tongs and hatchetmen, of whom Hayakawa is a shining example in the story. Sfc & * Mr. Fritz Hart, who returned to Melbourne recently from a six months’ tour abroad, stated that it was not unlikely that Dame Nellie Melba, whom he met in Paris, may bring an operatic company to Australia in the not far distant future.