Optical and Musical Feast Is Promised

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 248, 24 October 1934, Page 5

Optical and Musical Feast Is Promised

JESSIE MATTHEWS WILL FASCINATE IN “EVERGREEN.”

(State, Screening Saturday.)

The average musical picture is usually a little anaemic in regard to plot values, relying for its appeal main’.y on bevies of pretty girls and a handful of songs. “Evergreen,” however, has the cardinal virtue of a really novel story. It has been brought to the screen with all the resources of the Gaumont-British Shepherd’s Bush Studios, on which it reflects the highest possible credit. On the same programme is Ivan Perrin (wizard of the piano) on the stage.

Covering a period of some .25 years, the story shows Harriet Green, darling of variety, making her farewell appearance at the old London Tivoli, prior to marrying the Marcpiis of Staines. This union does not materialise, owing to the reappearance in Harriet’s life of an old lover, the father .of her secret daughter, Harriet the Second. Years pass, Harriet dying in South Africo, and her offspring gravitating to the stage as-a chorine. Tommy Thompson, an' over-enthusiastic publicity agent, working on Harriet’s amazing resemblance to her mothet, puts her over in the West End as the original Harriet, announcing that she has returned from South Africa rejuvenated. Follow numerous complications, tho funniest being Tommy’s forced masquerade as Harriet’s son, tho great fraud is brought to a finale by Harriot’s sudden confession to an angry first-night audience, her trial and acquittal on an impersonating charge, and ultimate triumph on merit.

Direction strikes just the right compromise between musical comedy licence and reality, imparting much conviction to the plot. Tho Tivoli sequences are excellently done, that fine old shrine of variety being reproduced with great fidelity to the original. Other settings includo some luxury apartments and a big modern theatre interior. Stage dancing scenes arc appealing to the eye, numbers of chorines cavorting with graceful case in original movements.

Jessie Matthews, who appears first as tho original Harriot and later as the daughter, gives here her finest performance to date. Her admirers will find a -new and, if possible, more ravishing Jessie than over before. She is at her best when revealing her true identity to the audience, throwing off wig and costume as she breaks into a lithe, abandoned dance. Very fine is her •Dancing on the Ceiling” scene, which depicts her pirouetting all round a house, clad in diaphanous draperies, as the sings the tuneful number that was the hit of the original stage show at the Adelphi in which she played the same part. In the court episode, Miss Matthews sings a dust with herself on an old cylinder gramophone a touching interlude. She is a star with a piquant personality that radiates through everything she has to do and in “Evergreen” she is simply delicious.