ROXY

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 969, 12 May 1930, Page 15

ROXY

“THE 13TH CHAIR” j Margaret Wycherly, famous New | York stage star, makes her debut in ! talking pictures in “The 13th Chair,” ! playing the role of “Rosalie Le Grange,” ; which she created on the speaking ! stage. The all-talking Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer mystery thriller is now at the Roxy Theatre. Tod Browning. Bon Chaney director, directed the play, a detective mystery of Calcutta, with a cast that includes Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams, Mary Forbes, I-lelene Millard. Bela Lugosi, Holmes Herbert, Cyril Chadwick and many others of note. The central love theme of the story is between Nagel and Miss Hyams, and this romance runs entirely through the structure of mystery, of plot and counter-plot, as the play progresses. The settings are elaborate, with weird teakwood carvings of India, the strange shutters of an Indian bungalow and the vivid moonlight of a Calcutta summer. One of the strangest photographic effects is that where the seance is seen as from the eyes of the “spirit'' hovering over it. By a strange device the camera apparently floats over the heads of the seance members, filming them from the strangest angles. The use of uncanny shadows and mysterious lightings reaches a poin» that rivals anything Europe has ever provided, and these effects, used for the first time in talking pictures, give* the new play a most unusual effectivetiveness.