NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 281, 17 February 1928, Page 15

NEW REGENT

NEW PROGRAMME TO-DAY For variety and quality of entertainment, the programme commencing at the New Regent to-day is claimed by the management to be the finest yet presented at the Theatre Magnificent. An item of outstanding merit is the appearance, afternoons and evenings, for one week only, of Owen McGiveney, the distinguished English protean actor, in his original and unique Dickens sketch. In this sketch are introduced the characters of Fagin, Bill Sikes, Nancy, Walter Monk and The Artful Dodger, all played by Mr. McGiveney himself. Mr. McGiveney, iii fact, makes 20 complete and different changes in the course of the 15-minute sketch. Tlie main feature of the picture programme is “Figures Don’t Lie,” starring Esther Ralston. Ford Sterling is cast as “Howdy” Jones, a successful but absent-minded business man, in the picture. It is* a part made to order for the man who won a name for himself as a comedy character actor in “The Show-Off,” "The Trouble With Wives,” “Drums of the Desert,” “Stranded in Paris,” and many others.

For his debut in the business world, Sterling takes the part of a man who keeps check on his engagements through the aid of a string on his finger and an attractive blonde secretary, while telling his associates that ho owes his success to punctuality, efficiency and good memory.

An item of interest to the musicloving public of Auckland is the firstrecital of Leslie V. Harvey, master organist, at the Wurlitzer. Mr. Harvey, who comes from a successful two years’ season at the Prince Edward Theatre in Sydney, will play “The Lost Chord” and “Kentucky’s Way of Saying Good-morning.” An exceptionally strong pictorial programme supports Neal Burns in a shrieking Parisian farce, “French Fried,” and the first of a clever series of Inkwell Cartoons, “Inkwell Imps,” entitled “Koko the Knight,” will provide the comedy side. A particularly interesting budget of world news includes a most interesting film of “A Day on a Submarine,” motor-boating in Sydney Harbour, life-saving clubs on St. Kilda Beach. A beautiful scenic of Mount Gambier, in South Australia, introducing the home of Adam Lindsay Gordon, completes an exceptionally powerful programme. Maurice Guttridge and the Regent Operatic Orchestra will play their usual excellent musical programme, including Suppe’s “Morning, Noon and Night,” as the overture.