AUSTRALIAN FARCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 39, 15 February 1934, Page 8

AUSTRALIAN FARCE.

"WALTZING MATILDA" COMING

The enjoyable comedy of Pan Hanna, as evidenced previously in "Diggers" and "Diggers in Blighty," is again to be found, if all reporte are true, in that popular New Zealan-der's latest starring Australian comedy, "Waltzing Matilda," which is to open a season at the Majestic Theatre to-morrow. "Waltzing Matilda" has for its theme the wonderful comradeship which exists between the settlers of the outback, and the characterisations are all drawn from life. The opening scenes are set in Melbourne, and shift rapidly from there to an up-country sheep station. If there are any sequences that fix themselves in the memory more vividly than the rest, they are the comedy scenes between Joe Valli, who plays excellently the part of a station overseer, and Pat Hanna, the latter enacting tho role of a down-and-out "digger," who takes to the road with his swaz. or "matilda," on his back. Pat Hanna himself, when the title was chosen after a recent country-wide competition, explained that "Waltzing Matilda" had not been chosen merely because of its Australian name. Most Australians knew A. B. ("Banjo") Patterson's famous verses of that name, and the story of the film was applicable in sentiment to that of ivhat ha.d become one of Australia's national songs. The song itself is featured in the spectacular ballroom sequence-oi-.the-production.