"WEST OF ZANZIBAR."

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19668, 11 July 1929, Page 7

"WEST OF ZANZIBAR."

LON CHANEY IN FAMOUS PLAT. CRYSTAL PAL-ICE, MONDAT. "West of Zanzibar" will be presented at Crystal Palace Theatre next week, and in it Lon Chaney heads a cast of distinguished players, including Lionel Barrymore, Warner Baxter, and Mary Nolan. It is a drama ■based on "The Shanghai Gesture." It is dificnlt to say whether Chaney, as the father, or Lionel Barrymore, as his dead wife's lover, gives the best performance. Lon Chaney requires but little make-up, just sufficient to make him middle-aged, bitter, nnd evil. They are real people, all of them, and the story they play out is as dramatic and strange as anything one could wish for from fiction or the theatre. Perhaps quite the most masterly stroke of the picture is the characterisation given by Mary Nolan. In most plays of this nature, the daughter of the vicious father comes home from school, sweet and innocent and trusting. Not so the Maizie of Miss J.olan. The whole picture is life-like, and the production aspects, the African jungles and landscapes, are likewise exceilenc. The second picture is a comedy On To Reno" and Marie Prevost has the role of the t'vpica! modern divorcee. Keno is where everybody can get a divorce for the asking, and the comedy evolved out of this \ alhalla is human, penetrating, and caustic. >.r Alfred Bum has s special musical score arranged for the S-mphonv Orchestra, and the box plans are now open at The Bristol Piano Company. ___^^_^_^_—_■