ENTERTAINMENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 August 1922, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS.

“THE TRUTH ABOUT HUSBANDS.”

The management of the People’s Theatre have secured as the attraction for to-night “The Truth About Husbands,” a screen version of Arthur Wing Pinero’s brilliant society drama, which held the boards for several seasons and has passed through many revivals because it is so popular in theme and so full of drama. It is head and shoulders above the ordinary screen drama. It fairly snaps and sparkles with clever line and tense situations. It is superbly mounted and splendidly enacted by a well-balanced cast headed by May McAvoy. Larry Lemon, the inimitable mirthmaker, also appears on this programme in "The Fall Guy,” a two-reel Vitagraph comedy. The prices are: D.C. 1/6, stalls 1/-. “OVER THE HILL.” Many good pictures with a sterling mother-love interest have passed across the silver sheet in New Plymouth, but never one with so deep and searching an emotional apeal as the Fox picture “Over the Hill,” presented at Everybody’s last evening. The picture had its genesis in Will Carleton’s poem “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse,” which had a popular run with dramatic elocutionists 40 years ago. What makes this picture so vitally appealing is the n\other touch of Mary Carr, who in the picture represents Mr Benton. Ma has slaved, day and night, for her children, only to see them drift away one by one, until only John, the harurn scarum lad, is left. John is detested by his brothers and sisters, particularly by Isaac, a pillar of the church, “one of the Lord’s anointed.” Only John’s mother and his sweetheart, Isabella, believe in him. Housethieves are the trouble in the district, and to his sorrow John finds his own father to be one of them, and in trying to shied him he implicates himself and is captured and imprisoned. But John is fine and game—he never lets his mother know where the real guilt lay, fearing that the knowledge would kill her. Old Benton dies —worried to death by his conscience. Charles marries and moves to New York. Ma endeavors to make a home with this one and that, to find, like King Lear of old, a frosty welcome. It is the mealymouthed Scripture-quoting Isaac, who finally makes the old lady’s lot so miserable that she is forced (owing to Isaac having stolen all the money John has sent for her keep) to seek sanctuary in the poorhouse. Tn the meantime John has been released from prison and has gone West and done well, but his faithful sweetheart, Isabella, discovering his whereabouts, induces him to return. Now he came to find that the snug Isaac had appropriated all the money he had sent for his mother’s support, and such is John’s fury that he starts out to drag his brother to the poorhouse. Finally John joyfully rescues his poor old mother from the poorhouse. Back they go to the old home. John to gain the respect and esteem of the countryside, and Ma to spend the autumn of her days in the loving care of her big-hearted scapegoat of the family. There will be matinees and night performances at Everybody’s to-day, and special prices are announced for the matinee.