Rennie Martin Sidney Faithful Sally Martin. Valentine G. Haemelinck Bil Reid.... Patrick Geere Price Harry Kapei, i Constable O'Brien..
Sergeant Spedding Fred Ambrose Stepping off smartly for the 1997- 38 season of footlights and make-up, the Amateur Dramatic Society has secured a highly intriguing little melodrama which could not help delighting the first night audience last night at the Lyceum Theatre.
This murder mystery is uncommonly well-written and the authors, Dorothy and Campbell Christie, display such a lively sense of humour that not even three murders, pistol shots in the dark, nor the sinister presence of an unknown assailant, can repress the bubbles of mirth that keep the piece effervescing like some tasty drink.
The transcendental brilliance of his own ideas makes Rennie Martin, an aspiring young journalist, extremely animated. To keep pace with them and their repercussions, his attractive sister and their mutual friend are likewise kept jumping about. The outstanding product or his fertile brain, announced immely as usual, is ostensibly to kill his sister in order to gain fame and fortune through the great publicity achieved by murder. The first act is concerned with the blossoming of ihe idea, arranging to have the corpse found and to have suspicion point unwaveringly at himself. The scheme is diverted by complications in the second act when the young trio discover a fortune in valuable jewels hidden in a secret passage of the old English manor house at which the story unfolds. A body, obviously murdered, is the next discover; ind then the audience discovers that an apparently respectable member of the stage community is really a slinking villain. That act contains enough discoveries to keep iny house awake, but it is in the to take dancing lessons in the morning. Ladies classes in limbering and tap are already in progress The American Womens Club is lamenting the absence of many of its members who have extended their "holiday (?)" trips to the States and who are naturally not returning as speedily as those who merely went to Manila, But despite depleted attendance at this and other clubs work and play is going on briskly
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.