KING'S THEATRE

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 222, 18 April 1933, Page 2

KING'S THEATRE

«JACK'S THE BOY"

K' the Boy," the Gainsborough j film, is showing at the King's. There | has been nothing more breezy, jolly '"and entertaining. It definitely estab-* Jishea Mr. Jack Hulbert, part-author Of its excellent scenario, 2nd Miss Cicely Courtneidge as screen comedians whose comic Inspiration amounts to genius. In them the spirit of true burselcme bums brightly and with no forced flame. It is not only that they know their business from A to Z, that Mr. • Hulbert can dance with a rhythmic precision, an elegance of movement, which sets the blood skipping through our veins, that Miss Courtneidge can be on occasion a clown as grotesquely funny as any of the Marx Brothers, nor that they | handle their material with a splendid, assurance. These things'are the sound, foundations of their art. Its brilliance [ derives from a keenness of observation which, both possess, an intimate, knowledge of the people in every wajk of life. Mr. Hulbert and Miss Courtneidge are a pair of comic mirrors reflecting vanities, manners ? and pleasure-everything that comes under their scrutiny (and nothing seems to escape it)-distorting it all, but never cruelly, into something supremely funny. It is this leaven of truth in Mr. Hulberfs wonderful studv of the tyro policeman in JaCKs too Boy," and Miss Courtneidge's delicious Cockney, attuning her accent to her pseudo-Scottish Cafe that lends an edge to their drolleries and a fillip to our aughter. Possibly this asnect of tueir racy humour can only ffSpreciated to the full by an English audience. But even where their unconscious "sitters" are not so ea- * Z recognised, the lively colours of tlieir satirical portraits-almost too; close to reality to be called caricatures —hold a zestful, exhilarating quality that is the hall-mark of their work.