Robust Variety Show Delights

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30453, 29 May 1964, Page 12

Robust Variety Show Delights

Why has Christchurch never heard of Terry O’Neill? He is almost certainly the funniest funny man to come to Christchurch with a variety show, and last night at the opening of “Paris By Night” at the Majestic Theatre he had the audience shrieking at his antics. No mere link between acts, this Irishman is the backbone of a very robust show.

From the gay opening cancan, “Paris By Night” never flags, presenting polished acts in rapid succession before a magnificent shimmering gold curtain. There are girls galore, and they are not just “girlies,” but gymnastic chorus lines working with the precision that comes only with hard practice. Particularly memorable was a surrealistic scene produced in semi-darkness with a faintly glowing air of enormous filmy butterfly wings. Another was a delightfully-staged impression of artists’ colours dancing out of an enormous palette. Perhaps the most dramatic act of all is Chong’s torchswinging, where he sets two flaming torches swinging around his head on each end I of a rope, then spins them off to twirl free high above the stage. He follows this with a dive through hoops of paper, gleaming knives and flames—without scratching a single scale on his dragonembroidered jacket. To give himself a bit of a challenge, he makes his leap clutching fragile cups in each hand and clenching another in his teeth. Other blades gleam when a long-legged girl, fixed ,to a device salvaged probably from the Spanish Inquisition, revolves while her partner, balanced on a slack wire, heaves 12 knives into the board, inches from her body. She just smiles. Ong of the acts in “Paris

By Night” may start a new craze in Christchurch. Its centre piece is a large aquarium in which can be seen swimming in ever more interesting circles, a shapely girl. She begins in a seaweed costume, but before the lights go out there are only bubbles. The cha-cha came to Christchurch with a fiery number from the Los Rivero group from the Folies Bergere—four singers who have worked out a spine-tickling version of “Over the Rainbow.” There is no end to the spectacle of acrobats, dancers and superb jugglers, but for laughs last night’s delighted audience settled for Terry O’Neil’s “Opera Without Words.” In this he showed a positive genius for manic farce. Decked out in a teal hat with pink feathers, a wasppatterned 'doublet and long hose—one green, one mauve —he and three other operatic nitwits brought the house down with an excellent illustration of the absurdity of some operatic lyrics when bereft of their music. The performance even had the crazy cast in a helpless heap of laughter at the final suicide scene.