ENTERTAINMENTS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 201, 22 February 1912, Page 8

ENTERTAINMENTS

EMPIRE THEATRE. "THE DOUBLE EVENT." ] The masterly production by cinematography of the dramatisation of Nat Gould's racing story "The Double Event," at the Empire Theatre last night, drew an audience that overflowed the house. Most people have of course read the well-known novel, in which the writer uses every dramatic, if aga-old, device to produce effects. When these effects are sharply shown, as in perfect cinematography, to a people who revel in horses and racing, the people become enthusiastic. Last night the audience at the Empire Theatre was more stirred than on any previous occasion, and rented their enthusiasm oftentimes in lusty cheers. I Mr. Alf. Boothman (who, by the way, is ,in the cast which plays the drama from which the pictures are taken) is peculiarly fitted to "speak the book." He has a tremendous voice, and his long training as a dramatic actor has taught him to speak the descriptive lines with a great fervour exceedingly helpful to the unfolding of the story. The various phases of villany by which the band man of the piece "nobbles" the favorite for the two great -events, which include the Melbourne Cup, are put on with a realism leaving nothing to be added. The actors and actresses have taken care not to overdo the thing. The story moves naturally, the- interest waxing to the culminating point where the detective | chases the villain, fresh from the murder I of a peer's new wife, over real roofs to .the destruction of the spieler-murderer. A magnificent glimpse of the famous Plemington racecourse is caught with its great gay crowds and the movement and beauty of a great event, unequalled in the world's annals of racing. There is a real_ "horsiness" about" the records as distinct from the unreal horsiness of actors on horseback, and the enthusiasm when the favorite flashes past a good winner was almost as great as if the audience was witnessing the true Cup. Mr. Boothman in his artistic treatment of the "book" happily does net slavishly stick to the text, when a human ex- | clamation, roared out in a big voice, will J illustrate an incident. The feeling is that one would much rather see "the i pictures than wade through the author's work. The programme of pictures, both before and after the star drama, are si great merit, and the remarkable film Showing the subjects taken by a new cinematograph operator, and how they lookedup on the screen is irresistibly comic, the continuity of the story being carefully preserved and the effects produced being highly grotesque. The prevailing Pathe Gazette gives "paragraph" pictures of groat current events, in which that well-known advertiser, Sir. R. S. S. Bades-Powell, gets too large a hearing. With the aid of cinematography, newspapers, wireless and other devices, it is impossible to escape from Baden-Powell