RIVOLI THEATRE.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 6, 7 July 1938, Page 14

RIVOLI THEATRE.

"The Plough and the Stars."

The deeply dramatic story of a young Irish girl for whom life and love are twisted and almost destroyed by the Easter Week "Insurrection" of iyi6, in Dublin gives Barbara Stanwyck one of the -finest roles of her career in "The Plough and the Stars," which has its Wellington premiere at the Rivbli Theatre tomorrow. Supported by Preston Foster in the principal male role, the red-headed star portrays a highly attractive Dublin slumdweller whose young husband is torn from her side by his loyalty to "the cause." The tragic drama that gripped those women whose husbands or lovers were for an entire week absent in the street fighting, is reflected in this story of Nora Clitheroe's struggle. A proud young woman, her attempts to cling to cleanliness,and respectability in the slums had made her an outcast among her poverty-ridden neighbours. Thus added pathos is given to her struggle because, she had to fight alone, without the consolation of feminine sympathy. "The Plough and the Stars" was directed by John Ford, who won the Academy award for directing "The Informer," and is pervaded by much the same mood and feeling as the latter. It is, however, relieved to a greater degree, by comedy, furnished chiefly by five characters portrayed by members of the famous Dublin Abbey Theatre. That wild-eyed clown of clowns, Jimmy Durante, careers madly through Columbia's new musical comedy, "Start Cheering," the associate feature. And when such excellent actors as Walter Connolly, Joan Perry, Charles Starrett, Gertrude Niessen, Raymond Walburn, The Three Stooges, and Broderick Crawford are discovered in the same picture and in a merry mood, the result can be nothing worse than wonderful.