SPLENDID COMEDY TO BE SHOWN AT CRYSTAL PALACE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18427, 31 March 1928, Page 10

SPLENDID COMEDY TO BE SHOWN AT CRYSTAL PALACE.

“Adam and Evil” is the story of a scrappily-married couple somewhere in California. But though the title be a contortion of Adam and Eve, it still has something to do with man’s natural naughtiness, as W. Shakespeare used to say. Still, Evil is Adam’s accompanying counterpart; still Eve sighs that she has nothing to wear; the old story of the Garden of Eden brought up to date by Mr Lew Cody and Miss Aileen Pringle, with Roy D’Arcv as a good Pinch-Me, and Gwen Lee a fourth dimension. A comedy: a marital drama of a captious wife, a philandering husband, a twin brother, and a large income. “Adam and Evil” will be the starring attraction at Crystal Palace Theatre on Monday, and one of the best comedies ever to be screened at that house. Lew Cody and Aileen Pringle are regarded as the best comedy team appearing in pictures; Miss Pringle, who is the wife of an English baronet, is also regarded as the only woman of the world on the screen,’ and when you put this pair into such a story as “Adam and Evil” and give them plenty of rope, they beat Rapier’s performance at Auckland. All comedies centring round a husband and wife of the leisured class usually depicted on the films, are sophisticated, smart, a little risque, so it is entirely unnecessary to mention that “Adam and Evil” follows this track. It is a story for the man and the woman of the world, and though spiced with that sophistication so beloved of Hollywood producers, it still retains an immense amount of genuine comedy, rather wild and hilarious at times: The story will not be told here, for it would be unfair to divulge the delicious and complicated plot: the trouble that ensues with the blonde and the twin brother; the greater trouble that follows when the ■wife and the blonde get the brothers mixed. There are cabaret scenes, and a choice bit when friend Husband comes home from a party, complete with caps, and squeakers and balloons: there is. in short, a large measure of fun and frivolity all along the line, with reconciliations with fine gusto at the finale. Aileen Pringle acts with adorable subtlety, Cody with a nice mingling of the gauche with the knowing; one of the boys, in fact. Not so long since “The Waning Sex” was Shown at Crystal Palace, a picture which most conclusively proved that Man, as a being, was doomed to obscurity. “The Reckless Sex,” the second picture on the bill next week, exalts Woman to the heights, in her chameleon moods, as an adventurer, a stalker of her prey, a gay romantic, a comedienne. Madge Bellamy, in this thrilling tale, set in Texas, down by the Rio Grande, gives one of the best performances of her career. A colourful and romantic story, a dash of O. Henry about it in its savour of Mexican revolutions, a dash of Miss 1928 at the end. Mr Alfred Bunz’s Symphony Orchestra will play the following musical programme; Overture, ‘ Zampa (Herold), “Adagio” (Mozart), “New World” (Dvorak), “Jetix d’Enfants” (Bizet), “Barcarolle” (Mai Burnes-Loughnan), “Molloy’s Songs” (Bayne), “Tip Toes” (Gershwin), “Dainty Miss” (Barnes), “A Dream of You” (Barron). The box plans are at the Bristol Piano Company, where seats may be reserved.