AMUSEMENTS.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 September 1929, Page 3

AMUSEMENTS.

PICTURES.

“PLAYING STRAIGHT” TO-NIGHT

“ Playing Straight,” the Columbia Master Picture which comes to the Princess -Theatre to-night is one of those films which appeals to everybody. Unlike most entertainments, “ Playing Straight ” is not entirely dependent upon its plot to insure its success. The vital'point of this screen drama is coated over with an element of human interest which touches the heart strings and awakens ifond memories in the minds of the adult population and great ambitions in the souls of youths. The mad pranks on the campus, when upper classmen meet freshmen and give them lessons in how to act in college; those laughable incidents in the dormitory when the student was supposed to be burning midnight oilbut actually lost his sleep in antics which are remembered as highlights of the college career, are caught by the camera. Then the famous proms, when you stole the other fellow’s girl and forced'him to be nice to the homeliest maid in the town are brought to mind by the action of “ Playing Straight.” Who does not look back with a smile at those fistic encounters, when life long friends were mortal enemies, just because they did not wish to room together. The stray flower bowl used as a (football; which crashed through the hall just as a professor was coming up the stairs, is another well remembered incident of college life. It is from such episodes as these that the author has woven {lie story of “Playing Straight.” It is a sincere endeavour to present campus life as it exists, without exaggeration or the introduction of unnatural plots and counter-plots. The cast and extra players are all former college students. They entered into the making of the production with all the zest and vigour which marked their college days. The list of featured players includes Bobby Agnew, Pauline Garon, Ben Turpin, Rex Lease, Churchill Ross, and Joan Standing. Among the extra players are a number of well-knowit college athletes and coaches. The picture reaches a climax in a big football match in which the hero runs to victory by kicking a goal. A topical, scenic, and comedy will complete the display to-night. Friday next “ Six Days.”

THE ALLAN WILKIE COMPANY. FORTHCOMING VISIT. , Plans for the forthcoming production of “ The Merchant of Venice ” by the Allan Wilkie Shakespearean Company at the Princess Theatre opened on Monday last at .Miss Mclntosh’s. No better play could have been selected than this ever-popular tragi-comedy which lias always been a prime favourite with thepublic, combining as it does all the elements of intense drama, broad humour, wit, charm and romance with that supreme mastery of stag'craft which is Shakespeare’s alone and which welds these elements into on-' complete dramatic whole. Let him who associates the very name of the world’s greatest playwright with boredom—and unhappily liis name is legioh —but witness “ Tile Merchant of Venice,” with its thrilling climax in the great trial scene and it will be strange if his ideas do not undergo complete revision. It is certainly not antiquarian interest or any form of artificial respiration that has kept these masterpieces of drama alive for three centuries and maintains them as perhaps the most vital force in the theatre even in the twentieth century, but their intrinsic merit as drama, written, not for the classroom or the stud}' but for interpretation on the stage, written moreover by a practical playwright with a matchless genius (for stagecraft, for characterisation, and for the sheer lyric beauty of,the poetry in which lie clothes his ideas.-:- Interpreted by artists •of the calibre- of Allan Wilkie, Miss Hunter-Watts, and the talented combination of artists supporting them we may be confident of a performance with acting, mounting and dressing of the first order.