“THE PATSY.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20701, 26 April 1929, Page 8

“THE PATSY.”

DELIGHTFUL AMERICAN COMEDY “The Patsy," the new American comedy which opened so successfully at His Majesty’s Theatre on Wednesday night under the J. C. Williamson management, is one of the most irresistibly humorous and altogether delightful productions that the company has yet sent to Dunedin. Clean, wholesome, healthy fun and a select cast of six make it won derfully easy for the audieu.ee to overlook the Americanisms that fill the line' 1 . It is an old story retold—a new Cinderella. There are only six characters—the husband. Bill Harrington, who came to himself, the wife who met Ler master after 25 years, two daughters as different as chalk from cheese, and their respective lovers. Of course, there is a slender thread of romance—about five reels of it by the spinning of Hollywood—on which to string the witticisms of the Harringtons’ turbulent home, but these witticisms are the play for better, for worse. Not that the romance itself in this play by Barry Conners is without skill or surprise. The love story is only less singular than the structure of wit and humour, the first glimpse of which provoked „ storm of spontaneous laughter on Wednesday night, which never really subsided until after the final tall of the curtain. But the manner in which the characters have been drawn and the cute things they are made to say, these are the features of the production that lift it above the level of mere low comedy, and make it such thoroughly enjoyable entertainment. For instance, there is a delicious but probably unconscious incongruity in the naming of Bill Harrington’s two daughters, Grace and Patricia—the one being, in all but Miss Eileen Sparks’s appearance, as graceless a shrew as ever pursued, with a pretty face, the tradition M the ugly sisters; the other, the heroine (the Patsy) being a cheerful, fidgetty imp, whose unpatrician alluremcntsf are exhibited in three acts of vital wriggling and jumping and hopping and twirling from chair to sofa and from telephone to music stool. This was Miss Irene Homer's manner, and she made, in her own way, a remarkable success of it. keeping the stage alive —but how alive!— aud lending to her Patricia a boisterous, a foreign, but an undeniable charm. And yet she was not incapable of an exquisite childlike wistfuluess and ' conduct, when the trials of the family Cinderella weighed just a little too heavy upon her, making her provocative mouth quiver and her small bobbed head droop. But the romance is as nothing beside the witticisms, or more expressively the wise-cracks. They spring up' with disconcerting rapidity, and are so bewilder ingly diverse. They are' sometimes indefinable explosions of irrelevance, rous-. ing purely involuntary laughter, some times proverbs of which someone has twisted the tail, sometimes the Transatlantic brother of back-chat, and most often a form of matrimonial or sisterly abuse. There is no defining one of these wise-cracks without the sorrow of quotation. Miss. Homer and the rest deliver themselves of them at top-speed, and never for one moment lose the good-humoured attention of the house. Here, then, la a study of American repartee and phraseo logy, shorn of all unpleasantness, with Miss Irene Homer the-acknowledged darling of the piece—the little Cinderella sister, who comes out on top after all. She deliberately heightens the colour oi both the romance and the wit, seeking an-1 obtaining the laughter that springs from fantasticism, and taking the risk, inherent in the method, she has chosen, of allowing the entertainment to flatten now and then whenever, for an Instant, the lightness of her touch fails her. The danger is great, but there are very lew passages in the play that do not surmount it; and the method when it succeeds, succeeds with a peculiar and devastating effect, not of humour only, but of decorative sentiment also—an effect greatly assisted by the beauty of the stage settings and gorgeous gowns, which are a continuous delight from the rise to the fall of the curtain. Her performance was by so much the best in the show that it would be pleasant to discuss it in detail. She wua unconscionably gentle with the wistfuluess of her part, and ex hibited an ability to raise a tear as easily she provoked o smile. It was a per formance of genuine distinction in a role that only a few actresses could handle gracefully.

Mr A. S. Byron found many opportunities for vigorous acting in the role >1 indulgent father where the Patsy was concerned, and wrathful husband in his dealings with a wife who took shelter behind hysterics whenever she could not get her own way. He was a big bluff travelling salesman, and played his part with judgment and spirit. It was im possible to dislike his Yankee twang, just as it was too difficult to refuse to laugh with him when he guffawed so explosively. He never overdid the extravagance that was necessary to uis part, and contrived his more theatrical scenes with admirable control. Miss Vera Gerald as Mrs Harrington indicated with the correct mournful humour the agonies of a rather snob jy woman who would not. submit without a struggle to the indignity of arriving at bridge parties in a street car, when all her friends turned up in their own motor cars. She discovered a great deal of character in a part that to most actresses would be little more than minor hysteri cal froth. Miss Eileen Sparks has tieability to thank for the unattractive view her audience had of her. She was asked to portray an unlovely character, that of the catty and unscrupulous elder sister. Grace, and she did it so well that she simply had to be thoroughly disliked by everybody. Mi Sam Wren, with Miss Sparks to assist him through a difficult passage of formal sentiment, faced with sparkling cheerfulness the troubles of one unfortunate enough to love such a shrew. Mr Brandon Peters, as Tony Anderson' the prince who married Cinderella, was amusingly clever. He set out. as the disinterested boy friend, to win for the Patsy the love of the man she had so long adored in secret. The search fanned the fires of his own regard to love heat, and in the end he found himself trying to dissuade Patricia frm having any thing to do with one so careless of her affection. He made a good amateur psychologist, and handled the finale, in which he finds that he has all the time been the Patsy’s Prince Charming, very distinctively, “ The Patsy ” will bo presented for four more nights.