"BALALAIKA"

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22512, 21 September 1938, Page 7

"BALALAIKA"

GREAT MUSICAL ROMANCE The box plans will open at 9 o'clock this morning at the D.I.C. for the approaching presentations by J. C. Williamson's New Royal Comic Opera Company of the great musical romance "Ealalaika," to be staged for a season of five nights only, beginning with two gala performances on Saturday afternoon and evening next. The final three nights of the brief Christchurch season, beginning on Friday, Septernber 30, will see the company in a brilliant revival of the charming musical opera, "The Desert Song." "As a treat for the eye," wrote a Wellington critic, "with its colour and movement, as a treat for the ear, with its tuneful music, and as a tonic to jaded city folk with- its genuinely humorous comedy, 'Balalaika' excels any theatrical production which has been brought to Wellington for many a long year. This J. C. Williamson show is first and foremost a stage spectacle, with ballet dancing as one of its strongest features. It is gorgeous and scintillating in every detail, and may be called a musical comedy, a musical play, or even a comic opera, as fancy pleases. Indeed, at times, the production rises to operatic heights. Certainly it has considerable more substance than much of what used to pass under the name of musical comedy. ■ " 'Balalaika' has a very definite story, in the embellishment of which is enlisted all the skill at the command of stage mechanists. The scene of the story is Russia —the Russia of prerevolutionary days, when the Tsars ruled in pomp and held courts whiw were the last word in splendour, not to mention intrigue. 'Balalaika,' too. is rich in comedy and dancing; all members of the exceptionally large cast seem really capable of acting, singing, or dancing, as the case may be. and not a few combine all three accomplishments; the music is something definite and decidedly pleasing. and it truly reflects the spirit of the production. The mounting and frock - ing are other very attractive features of this production."