ST. JAMES THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 85, 4 January 1941, Page 13

ST. JAMES THEATRE

Set mainly in the good old Vienna of waltzes and beer gardens, “Spring Parade” yesteray entered the third week of a most successful season at the St. James Theatre. The leading lady is Deanna Durbin—a little more mature, a little more given to serious romance, but as charming as ever —and her leading man is Robert Cummings. Falling to sleep in what seems to be a haystack—it is really a miller’s cart loaded with hay—the little peasant girl, Ilonka Tolnay (Deanna), wakes to find herself in Vienna, far from her home. Living with the miller till suitable transport back can be found, Ilonka is enraptured by the beauty and the strangeness of the big city. Women there have beaux, ns she soon learns, and it is not long, before she finds one for herself. He is Harry Martin (Robert Cummings), a young soldier, conscripted into the army, who would sooner write music than drill. He does not seem to answer one of the specifications of Ilonka’s fortune —-she has been told her lover will be an artist —but when she hears that he composes music she knows at once that this is the man. Life is not quite so simple as that, however, and Ilonka passes through many enthralling adventures before she finds the path that lerads to marital happiness.