NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 946, 12 April 1930, Page 15

NEW REGENT

“IT’S A GREAT LIFE” “It’s a Great Life," now at the New Regent Theatre, not only gives the big public of the Duncans a brandnew assembly of gags and songs, but it presents the girls in a strong, wellsustained story, in which they demonstrate that they can not only sing, but act mighty well whenever required. The story is a good one. It more

>r less dramatises what would happen if a great “sister act" were ever to have a disagreement. Casey and Babe Dugan were inseparable until Jimmy Dean, a piano player in a department store, began to pay court to Babe. When the girls and Dean are fired

from the store because of jokes made by Rosetta at a very funny amateur show staged by the employees, the act goes great in vaudeville, until it is split by the marriage of Babe and Jimmy, and a resultant flare-up from “Casey.” There is no reason why wo should spoil anyone’s pleasure by relating the story in detail. Suffice it to say that it has been done in a very human manner by the capable director, Sam Wood. One is made to feel that “backstage" is a very human place, indeed, and that vaudevillians are very decidedly “people." Everybody will want to know about the songs the two girls sing in the production. There are six of them, all peaches. Nine-tenths of last night’s audience, for example, went out humming ‘ Following You." which fits the Duncan Sisters perfectly, because, like nil the others, it was “made to order.” “It’s a Great Life" was filmed with technicolour sequences, which adds charm to the costumes and scenic effects. The entertaining supporting programme at the Regent is headed by an amusing Laurel and Hardy comedy.