Dramatic Club Notes.

During the last few Varsity sessions the Dramatic Club Committee, though working under many disadvantages, has yet contrived to make the gym. a veritable pleasure palace with their readings. This year the committee have gone further and have very pleasantly bridged the gap of the long vacation with an enjoyable programme of weekly readings. The first, of these readings was held on the evening of Friday, February 13, when a large audience fairly revelled in the brightness of A. P. Herbert's "La Vie Parisienne." Miss Mary Cooley charmingly apologised for the lack of music but the songs in the comedy were sufficiently well read by the persons roncerned to whet all our appetites for more which after all is the test by which a reading must stand or fall. Briefly the play concerns a prim and proper English family (father, mother and daughter) who visit Paris and contrive to show us that Paris in 1863 had precisely the same effect on its devotees as the modern Paris does. Miss Cooke was a charming Julia and her reverie as to the propriety of speaking to strange French women with its attendant. dangers of being entered for domestic service in the Argentine fairly brought down the house, while her vacillations between her duty to her parents and the inclinations of her heart towards the handsome lover played by Mr. Riscke, were the causes of some amusing effects in which her father, mother, lover, his half brother (Mr. Mason) and his adoring dressmaker (Miss Cooper) were involved. Miss Cooper interpreted her role very well indeed. Altogether it was a very successful evening.

A praiseworthy feature of the next evening's reading was the maimer in which the committee managed to give another group of members an opportunity of enjoying the reading from the player's side of the footlights. The club has a large active membership and the committee is making a creditable attempt to do justice to all. Unluckily the committee offended in another direction as the two plays selected for the evening ended almost before it started—it was barely 9 p.m. when the last line was spoken. If we criticise the choice of plays as being insufficient entertainment for a full evening we can find no other cause for cavilling—for two more directly contrasting plays of such outstanding merit it would be difficult to find.

"The Poacher" read first by Misses Reid Jose Anderson and Messrs Read Reardon and Wright was a play that brought the peace of a village before our gaze while "In the Zone" was a highly emotional play dealing with the events in the seamen's foc'sle of an ammunition carrier lumbering through the submarine zone. Miss Read was very effective as the wife who too late regretted the conversion of the village hard ease admirably played by Harry Read and Miss Jose Anderson's charming voice came to us mainly from her bedroom where a dutiful daughter should be when such events went on at such an hour. Mr. Reardon played the part of another village bad lad who resolutely withstood the deacon's attempts at conversion delivered by Mr. Wright in proper deaconian manner and played such a part as only Mr. Reardon knows how. The climax came when Mr. Read attempts Mr Reardon's conversion and finally falls from grace himself through the insidious temptations of the unregenerate Reardon and the perfidy of the deacon. As may be imagined the whole thing was hugely enjoyed by cast and audience.

The succeeding play gave all the characters, entirely men, a glorious chance of using bad language to their heart's content with no fear of rebuke and the slightly shocked laughter of the audience seems to prove that they succeeded. The laughter soon subsided, however, as the play progressed in its intensity and fairly held the attention of the listeners. The play was a difficult one to put over but considering the scant opportunities for rehearsing the players succeeded fairly well. The following took part: Messrs Banks, Burns, Eunis, Hogg (who also read the stage directions for both (?) plays), Larkin, Riske, Whitcombe, L. G. Williams.