AUSTRALIAN COMEDIAN.

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19759, 14 December 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

AUSTRALIAN COMEDIAN.

JIM GERALD IN LONDON.

CRITICISM OF NEW SHOW,

No one will deny good intentions on the part of the 12 people who are credited with the creation and staging of “ Don't Spare the Horses, Kenneth Duffleld’s new musical show which has opened at the Garrick Theatre, says the London Daily Mail.

That those intentions have in many parts gone astray—so far as the provision of new ideas, humour, and a well-balanced entertainment arc concerned —is a pity. Mr Duflleid has had the idea of recruiting a company of Empire talent — and the performance revealed some quite agreeably gifted newcomers. But so' much of the material supplied to them was disconcertingly reminiscent

n_f the small touring revues of old that these artists bad to rely almost entirely on their own personalities to score success.

Jim Gerald, who has been a topline star in Australia for years, Is a robust-mannered, likeable comedian well in the traditions of the old musichalls; Frieda Bohning, his partner, is equally effective as a singer, a slapdash comedienne and an acrobatic dancer; Billy Kershaw, from Australia, is an expert tap-dancer; Latasha and Laurence provide some'spirited exhibition dancing; and Anne Yates is as good to look uiion as any young woman we have seen on the London stage for a long while. Thcsp artists —with a British contingent headed by Rex Evans —work with a will; and if one is prepared to accept this as a variety show, with both good and bad patches, then there is a reasonable amount of entertainment to be had. The top price, it should he mentioned, is 7s 6d. Exceptions to the general standard of the sketches arc an idea of how an enterprising firm of restaurant and hotel caterers would run lhe front-line trench aYrnngcmenls in a war, and a technical discussion aboul grand opera by two charwoman —both amusing ■,'notions.