AMUSEMENTS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20093, 24 November 1930, Page 5

AMUSEMENTS.

"ALF'S BUTTON." * FINE ENGLISH FARCE AT theatre royal. z>ink<- iuo [nn!it" he cjaculaiea, a.a a v/eird Eastern creature rose in a puff of smoke out of the ground. Still more surprised was ho when the creature folded ita :;-rmß and bowed and in a second puff dwappeared. AH Higgin« could only gape, rub eves ' an< i £apo again. Then his pal Bill appears. "Blimey, Alf," he suya, "what's up wi' yer? Ycr all pink, Alt." And Alf in horror discovers that his Flanders complexion has changed to a delicate salmon. The Slave of the Button has kept his word. That, briefly, is the theme of "Alf's Button," tho new British talking picture that had ita first screening in Christchurch at Theafcr© Royal on Saturday, it is a very good theme. There have been comedies and cumedioa, but never a comedy with such a plot ao this. There have been funnier pictures, if laughs per reel are to be taken aa a criterion of screen farce, but fihe manifest impossibility of this story of W. A. Darlington's, its human fun, and its exaltation of tho humble and foolish, make it something apart. How many tirod creatures of everyday life wish for an Aladdiji's lamp, and spend stolen hours visualising the possibilities in the possession of such an impossibility? It is because of this that the plot o£ "AH s Button" in different. The whole picture has to do with the button. By some charier this button on All s army tunic was made out of a piece rf thrs original Aladdin's lamp, and when Alf rubs it the Slave of the Button appears to demand his master's plen*?ure. Then the two Cockney soldiers allow their imaginations to run riot, and out of the result the rest o: the story is woven. Altogether -this *.? i too riotous for description.