ENTERTAINMENTS.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18350, 9 June 1931, Page 9

ENTERTAINMENTS.

TO-NIGHT'S PROGRAMMES. CIVIC THEATRE. Two of Broadway’s favourite legitimate stage funsters head the support in Paramount’s flirnisation of Schwab and Mandel’s hilarious musical comedy, “ Queen High,” which comes to the Civic Theatre to-night. According to the story, they are business partners in a garter producing enterprise. They can't seem to support each other’s views, however, and their lawyer, to settle their differences, proposes to deal them each a poker hand to decide which will become the butler of the other. Ruggles loses, and becomes the butler in the .Morgan household. The ensuing situations and dialogue are packed with uproarious laughs. Ruggles played in “ The Lady Lies,” “ Roadhouse Nights," “ Gentlemen of the Press,” and “ Young Man of Manhattan." .Morgan was the “ heavy ” in Helen Kane’s “ Dangerous Nan McGrew.” STRAND THEATRE. , “Fun in a Baeuty Parlour” might easily be a substitute title for “Reducing,” the new Marie DresslerPolly Moran co-starring comedy which is the bill at the Strand Theatre. In the same manner that the stock market served as the subject of fun in the successful "Caught Short,” so are beauty parlours, their proprietors and their patrons used as the subject of the lampoons in the new attraction. The story revolves about two sisters, Polly Roach, who has become the successful New York beauty specialist, “Madame Rochay," and Marie, wife of a small-town mail carrich, portrayed by Lucien Littlefield. Fun begins when -Marie piles her husband and three children, including Anita Page, on to a Pullman car en route Lo visit Madame Rochay. The scenes which ensue will be familiar to those who have been in sleeping cars when a large family boarded flic train in the middle of the night at soino wayside station. Further humour is evolved when Marie becomes an employee in Polly’s beauty establishment. Inexperienced with Hie various devices, she lias the place in an uproar when she pulls the wrong levers and almost kills customers by blundering manipulation of the various reducing machines. The laugli episodes reach their climax when in Polly’s absence Marie tries to show the place to two inspectors from the health department. Polly returns to find chaos in her beauty parlour, while her efforts to straighten out the tangle only make it worse and the uproarious sequence ends with Poliy being hurled inLo a mud bath in all her finery THEATRE ROYAL.

“The Seas Beneath” is drawing large audiences to the Theatre Royal. This remarkablt romance of submarine warfare, created by John Ford for Fox"Mov/etone,'skilfully combines a unique love-story with a breathless and graphic portrayal of tlie Allied struggle against the Übout. Opening with the departure of a determined little flotilla from New York for the Canaries with a certain German submarine as its objective, developing its strange and sympathetic romance at the spy-ridden port of Santa Cruz, and ending in a terrific snd marvellously photographed naval battle between the giant U-boat on one side and an American submarine and a “mystery ship” on the oilier, "The Seas Beneath” is truly an epic of maritime history. Notable performances arc given by George O’Brien and .Marion Lessing in the leading roles and by Warren Hynier, William Collier, senr., and Walter C. Kelly as the continuously battling sailors.

Scenes taken on a submarine’s deck, both on the surface and fifty feet beneath; inside Lhe submarine itself; .on a schooner being shelled at close range—these arc some of the unusual camera shots in “The Seas Beneath." ROXY THEATRE. “The Big Trail," to be shown at Frankton to-night, is a real epic of lhe screen, dealing with pioneer life in America. It tells a dramatic story of the struggles of ttie early settlers in developing new country, and many spectacular scenes are introduced, giving a vivid background to the engrossing romance. One of the most sensational scenes Is provided when the Indians attack the pioneers’ camp. IVJISCHA LEVITZKI, PIANIST. “The genius that was only suggested in Misclia Levitzki when lie was here ten years ago blazed into fiery relief at the Town Halt on Saturday night. Always a superb technician, lie seems to have found, in one brief decade, a deptli of soul that can only bo called profound,” wrote the musical critic of the Sydney Daily Telegraph after Misclia Levitzki’s opening concert at I lie Sydney Town Halt. The numbers chosen lor that recital proved so popular with I lie huge audience that Mr Levitzki has selected several of them for his Hamilton concert. Among the big numbers will lie lire Tausig transcription ol’ Bach's massive organ Toecato and Fugue In D minor, and Beethoven's “Appassionata” Sonata. According to ttie musical critics, Levitzki gives an entirely fresh reading of Beethoven, and breaks away from the traditional renderings. Other numbers in the opening programme will be a Chopin group, comprising lhe F sharp minor Impromptu, two Etudes, tho A Hat Waltz and ttie A flat Polonaise, Jeux d’Lau” (Bavcl), Waltz in A major (Misclia Levitzki), Hie brilliant Hungarian -Rhapsody No. 0 (Liszt), “The Girl Willi the Klaxon Hair’’ (Debussy), and “Golliwog's Cake Walk (Debussy). 'flic boxplan Is open, and unreserved tickets will also be obtainable to-morrow and Thursday.