PLAZA THEATRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 44, 21 February 1936, Page 12

PLAZA THEATRE

“TOP HAT,” “Top Hat,” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Kogers, concludes a week’s season at the Plaza to-night. The musical score was written by Irving Berlin. Among his new dances, Fred Astaire gives two versions of “The Strings” and also does a solo specialty, “ Top Hat,” in which a chorus of top-hatted young men perform some clever and intricate steps. With Ginger Kogers, Astaire sings “Isn’t This a Lovely Day?” and “Cheek to Cheek,” while I the final number, “The Piccolino,’ with a chorus of 60, is a fitting finale. Edward Everett Horton plays humor ously as Horace Hardwicke, the mis-, taken husband, Helen Broderick mak-’ ing a definite success as his match-mak j I ing wife. “The Man Who Broke the Bank at | Monte Carlo.” Ronald Colman, the popular English' screen star, makes a welcome reappearance in the delighful romance “The Alan Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” which is to be the new feature at the Plaza Theatre, commencing tomorrow. Colman gives a faultless performance, and lends a great deal of fascination to that somewhat mythical ligure who in a single night achieved the apparently impossible, walking out of the casino with something like six million francs, not in his pocket, but in a suitcase which he had brought along with him in blissful anticipation. When he solemnly declares that he is through with gambling, and that he knows he would never again have such luck, the proprietors of the casino set about scheming to make him withdraw his words, and employ every means I within their power to entice him to reenter the gambling arena. Joan Bennett is selected to do the enticing, and the plot gets well under way. Colman lis in something of a dilemma, as he does not know whether Joan is sinI cerely in love with him or whether she [ is just leading him on for the sake of a cheque when she has brought him bark to Monte Carlo. The picture is entertaining and without a dull moment, and it is largely because of the excellent acting of the lesser members of the cast that it stands out as on*, nf the best to have been booked for this city for some time.