Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Monday 18 July 1932, page 4


BRYANT'S PLAYHOUSE.

A Little Theatre Reopened.

The little theatre in the vault of St Peter's   Hall Forbes street was reopened as Bryant's Playhouse on Saturday night when Mr George Bryant and Miss Beryl Bryant pre-

sented a group of one act plays. The play-house was formally opened by Lady Gordon who said that many of the audience would

remember that under Miss Carrie Tennant the playhouse had existed as the Community Theatre. Now Mr Bryant and Miss Bryant wished to use it as a training ground for young actors and actresses and for drama-tists. The students who appeared there would have the advantage of Mr Bryants wide knowledge of the stage. There would be per-formances at least once a week. Later they hoped to have two performances a week.

For the opening night the producers chose four modern plays that required straight-

forward and light hearted handling. The most elaborate of them was A A Milne's "The Man in the Bowler Hat" which told how the domestic monotony of a wife and husband who complained that nothing really romantic ever happened was disturbed momentarily by the intrusion of an inscrutable hero (Mr John Broinowski), a heroine (Miss Betty Minnet), a villain (Mr George Bryant) and a bad man (Mr Jack Lloyd). The whimsical piece was acted with the requlsite mixture of piquancy and naturalness. In "Set a Thief,"

an American play by Cooper Megrue, Miss Anne Gordon gave an accomplished and spirited performance as an amateur news-paper reporter who breaks into the home of a dishonest financier (Mr Bryant) and obtains from him by guile a confession of his duplic-ity. The rhymed lines of Square Pegs by Clifford Bax were delightfully spoken by Mrs Ruth Walker (as Hilda a modern girl) and   Miss Lela Forsayth (as Gioconda, a Venetian)

The fourth play of the group was Maurice Baring's "Catherine Parr" which depicts Henry VIII (Mr Richard Dowse) rejecting a too lightly boiled egg at a breakfast table at which he sits face to face with the last and least obsequious of his procession of wives. Miss Mary Mansfield was an appropriately saucy Catherine.

The plays will be repeated or Saturday night.