NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 284, 21 February 1928, Page 14

NEW REGENT

VAUDEVILLE AND PICTURES Owen McGiveney, the celebrated protean actor, is amazing audiences this week at the New Regent. In a scene from “Oliver Twist” he plays in turn the roles of Fagin, Bill Sikes, Nancy, Monks and the Artful Dodger, and, though in some instances barely a “split second” elapses between the exit of one character and the entrance of the next, each in turn is a masterpiece of costume and make-up. In all he makes 20 changes in 15 minutes, and the action of the play is at no time held up for more than three seconds.

Esther J£alston, starred in “Figures Don’t Lie,” which is the chief pictorial attraction, belives that most working girls prefer a husband to a typewriter and a shorthand note-book. Miss Ralston takes the part of a business girl in her latest picture, and says she has made a study of the stenographer's outlook on life, as well as of typewriting and shorthand.

Miss Ralston shows how much trouble a working girl may get into by trying to look after her employer’s business affairs. Even when she uses methods as innocent as trying memoryjogging strings around his fingers.

The boss’s wife thinks that the secretary wants to get strings on her husbands’ pocketbook instead of his finger. The young sales manager is not sure about it, but he does know he wants the secretary. It is an hilarious story of everyday life, this “Figures Don’t Lie.” All the comic incidents that can centre around a distractingly beautiful girl, a harmless but susceptible middle-aged man, a high tempered and jealous wife, and an equally jealous lover, are crowded into the picture in laughprovoking sequence.

There is more than just entertainment, and it abounds in that, behind the picture. However, it shows that things aren’t always what they appear on the surface, and that goes for affairs of the heart as well as affairs of business.

An item of interest to the musiclovcing public of Auckland is the recital 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-moyning.”

Maurice Guttridge and the Regent Oneratic Orchestra play their usual excellent musical programme, including Suppe’s “Morning, Noon and Night,” as the overture.

The comedy in Paramount’s version of “Abie’s Irish Rose” will be provided by three plef/ers, Rosa Rosanova, who plays the deaf housekeeper; and Bernard Gorcey and Ida Kramer, original creators of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Cohen, in their stage parts.