Mr. Edwards said that Not for Children had failed in New York. It had never been played in London, but it, had succeeded enormously twice in Dublin. “In the South,” he went on, “we have a well-fed man who wanted a tit-bit, but here you have a hungry man who wants a hunk of beef [...] You must not offer him a caviare sandwich.”
 “Thank God you are hungry,” he declared. “I have made the mistake of inviting you to afternoon tea instead of dinner. That was a mistake on my part. It is nothing against Belfast for not liking the play.”
 Mr. Edwards said he pleaded guilty to a suggestion that he had made a mistake in bringing the Elmer Rice play to such a large threatre [sic]. “But, I am pleading, not to defend myself, but Mr. Rice.”
 What they had always tried to do in the Gate was to experiment and change, Mr. Edwards said.
 “Why should we pay money to see your experiments? you may ask. I do not know. Why should you pay to see people repeating themselves over and over again, like somebody with the hiccoughs,” he added. [End].

 Hilton Edwards, the actor and director who founded the Dublin Gate Theater with Micheal MacLiammoir in 1928, died Thursday in a Dublin hospital. He was 79 years old.
 Mr. Edwards, who was born in London, produced and directed more than 300 plays at the Gate, ranging from the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Goethe and Ibsen to the comedies of Shaw and Sheridan and new Irish plays, by such authors as W.B. Yeats, Brian Friel and Mr. MacLiammoir.
 As an actor Mr. Edwards played leading parts, including the title roles in Peer Gynt, Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth and Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner. On Broadway in 1966, Mr. Edwards directed Mr. Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! and The Loves of Cass McGuire.
 He began his career acting with the Charles Doran Shakespeare Company in 1920 in Windsor and then joined the Old Vic in London, playing in all but two of Shakespeare’s plays before leaving the company a few years later. Trained in music, he also sang baritone roles with the Old Vic Opera company. Ireland for a Season
 After touring with various companies in Britain and South Africa, he went to Ireland in 1927 for a season with Anew McMaster’s company and met Mr. McMaster’s brother-in-law, Micheal MacLiammoir. As he told an interviewer once, both men wanted a theater of their own; Mr. MacLiammoir wanted it to be in Ireland and Mr. Edwards did not care. “I don’t care about nationalism, I care about the theater,” he said.
 The two men’s talents were complementary. Mr. MacLiammoir was an actor, designer and writer; Mr. Edwards a director, actor, producer and lighting designer.
In New York in 1948 he played in and directed John Bull’s Other Island’ and directed The Old Lady Says No and Where Stars Walk. In the early 1960’s Mr. Edwards took a two-year leave from the Gate to become drama director of Ireland’s first television station. He appeared in and directed films and also appeared on television in roles including Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield.