“QUEEN HIGH”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 287, 24 February 1928, Page 15

“QUEEN HIGH”

AT HIS MAJESTY’S A well-filled house greeted the second performance of “Queen High” at His Majesty’s Theatre last evening. The musical comedy is very tuneful and bright. Mr. Cecil Kelleway and Mr. BarrettLennard shoulder the comedy packs. They are two quarrelling, backbiting partners in a garter concern. A podgy, droll, little figure, referred to as the “bone and fat” of the concern, Mr. Kelleway added another droll portrait to his gallery. of similar studies. The butler, his partner, was sufficiently vapid and stormy by turns. Leyland Hodgson, eventually appointed manager of the company, is given scope in “Queen High.” “Don’t Forget,” the haunting little leitmotiv of the musical comedy, fell to him in conjunction with Miss Burness, likewise “Cross .Your Heart,” “Who’ll Mend a Broken Heart?” and other vocal plums. Byrl Walkeley’s soprano was also more in evidence. “Beautiful Baby,” with Mr. Kelleway, was admirable fooling. Much is seen, too, of Josephine Head, Ramona, and Albert Hugo, dancers from the Folies Bergere, in “Queen High.” Their first offering, an eccentric number, won them well-merited applause. Miss Head was subsequently a picturesque figure in a small beplumed hat, reminiscent of the Victorian ’so’s, in a waltz with Mr. Hugo. Ramona, in her solo, danced with the lightness and grace of thistledown before the wind. Miss Burness is more satisfactorily cast, though her voice is hardly yet of sufficient range for the heavy demands set upon it. A deboniar figure was Roy Russell, the enterprising legal adviser. Osmond Wenban, the office boy, was constantly under notice with his irritating giggle and fiery head. Edna Browne, playing the wife of the Nettleton partner, who took more than a professional interest in garters, had scarcely sufficient cause for running the full hysterical gamut. Carlton Faye and Gordon Rodda beguiled Old Man Jazz into his most sprightly mood at the grand pianos.