THEATRE NOTICES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20868, 9 May 1931, Page 10 (Supplement)

THEATRE NOTICES.

INEFFECTIVE PUBLICITY.

SUPERIORITY OF FILMS. It is frequently suggested that one reason why the theatre lags behind the film in popular appeal is that the theatre does not display the same resource and ingenuity as the export showmen of Hollywood in making known the interest of its wares, writes Allan Bland in the Theatre World. Its appeals for public support are too dignified, too old-world and scholarly for the modern rush and tumble, burly and burly.

It may be so. I have been at some pains to analyse the methods used by both the stage and the screen in their publicity material," and print below a specimen of each, in order that you may judge for yourselves whother there is any truth in the criticism. I prefer to make no comments of any kind.

Exhibit A

" Oil or about April Ist, 1931, in conjunction with the Directors of the Athenaeum Theatre, Ltd., Messrs. Solomon J. Ernstein and Gus Tiiublo will, in association with Drainaco Theatrical Enterprises (1931), Limited, present, by arrangement with the executors of tho late Roberston Kean (for Minerva Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue) Properties Incorporated, " Romeo and Juliet " a£ tho Athenaeum Theatre, Charing Cross Road, W.C.2. The play, by

William Shakespeare, will be produced by Mr. Howland Raugh, the well-known Shakespearean producer, who has been responsible for many Shakespeare pioductions in the past. On this occasion Mr. Chatlerton Hepburn will be the Romeo, while the Juliet will be Miss Morveena Dudge." Exhibit B. A few extracts only from the publicity Material oi a leading firm of film-pro-ducers. HELL'S OVEN! Ooze! Heat! Flies! The torrid blazing, pitiless heat of the Equator! '1 he muddy, sluggish waters of an African river swirling in ceaseless cataracts, swarming with crocodiles, and ever hurrying on, on to the distant ocean! The monotony! The pathless, unending gloom of the jungle where Nature, red in tooth and claw, is ever watching for its puny victim inan !!! A lurking shadow on an overhanging bough, the gleam of yellow eyes in the dusk, a snap of steely jaws! Death in the dripping solitudes of an as yet scarcely travelled continent thousands of miles from the cheerful home-ward-hurrying crowds under I lie great white lights of Broadway or the quaint Dii'kensian oil-lamps of the Strand (London ; Eng.).

A man with his back to the wall at the end of the world! Then—gold ! treachery' murder! sacrifice! and over all the shadow of a woman's unselfish love binding ii]> the wounds of the past as the westering sun sinks behind them over the land of giraffes and greed !

This 1000 per-cent. all-talking, all blood, all-animal, almost-human wonder-sensation smashes straight home to ihe heart-strings, and while plucking a fragrant chord of true he-to-her love-stuff, evokes a mighty, staggering, sky-tearing, rip-snorting, gatecrashing, lending, soul-searing epic of lust, cruelty, and sport in what Ralph Waldo Emeison described as " Africa, that large, strange place.'"