Sári Petráss (1888-1930)

"GIPSY LOVE"
By Franz Lehar and Basil Hood (from the Hungarian)
Produced at Terry's Theatre, London
Reviewed in The Daily Mail [London] - 3rd June, 1912
MR. GEORGE EDWARDES'S TRIUMPH - BRILLIANT MUSICAL PLAY

If "Gipsy Love" does not break all records at Daly's Theatre it will be because existing records at Daly's are particularly difficult to break. Mr. Franr Lehar's new musical play, which Mr. George Edwardes produced there on Saturday night, is the best example of Viennese Light opera yet seen in London, and for it Mr. Edwardes has contrived a setting in which spectacular splendour is judiciously tempered by perfect taste, and what might have been a chaos of colour and a riot of movement is ordered into an harmonious whole by perfect artistry. In all pieces of this kind the determinating factor between success and failure is undoubtedly the music, Mr. Lehars score is a long succession of beautiful numbers. Languorous waltzes with the soothing, sensuous seductiveness of a summer nipht in the South alternate with the exhilarating effervescence of the vigorous Roumanian and gipsy dances. To pick out the plums from such a prize basket is impossible. But though one necessarily gives pride of place to the music there is no intention to disparage the work of Messrs. A. M. Winner and Robert Bodanzky, the authors of the piece, or that of Mr. Basil Hood, the English adapter, who between them have provided a story which has the somewhat unusual merit of being always more or less in evidence.

STORY OF THE PLAY

On the day of her betrothal to Jonel, a smart young soldier, Ilona runs away from the house of her father, a Roumanian nobleman, with Jozsi, a plausible, picturesque gipsy musician. Ilona thought Jonel tame, and with all a young girl's restless longing for excitement and freedom, she was easily captivated by the debonair gipsy, who was a sort of nomadic Don Juan.

Dragotin, Ilona's noble father, and Lady Babby, a slightly unconventional member of the English aristocracy, who was his guest, pursued the misguided girl to the gipsies' haunts, where Lady Babby, by giving "the glad eye" to the fickle Jozsi, saved the already disillusioned Ilona from a gipsy marriage - a marriage which apparently was only as binding as the kerchief which was worn as its outward and visible sign. So the romantic little runaway returned home to the arms of the faithful Jonel. Lady Babby, perhaps feeling that she was hopelessly compromised, gave her heart and hand to the noble Dragotin, and Jozsi continued to run himself in the admiration of his beautiful compatriots, who hung upon him in batches and worshipped him in crowds.

There is a new star in the stage constellation. For the part of Ilona Mr. Edwardes has made the successful experiment of engaging a young Hungarian, Miss Sari Petrass, who is a singer and an actress - a rare combination of qualities. The house took her to its heart at once, as, indeed, it did the entire company, which includes Miss Gertie Millar, who had an uproarious greeting as Lady Babby and fully earned it by her deliciously dainty dancing. Mr. Robert Michaelis as the irresistible Jozsi; Mr. Harry Dearth, who sings magnificently; and Mr. W. H. Berry as Dragotin, very funny in the droll Berry manner. The reception from start to finish was all that the heart of man or manager- could desire.

S. F. B.