"Aunt Sally." At the Tivoli.
I HAVE never seen anyone work harder than Miss Cicely Courtneidge does in this comedy with music. Towards thz end, after she has seized the lead in a cabaret show by pretend- ing to be Mademoiselle 7-wa from the Folies-Bergeres, she is kidnapped by gangsters and imprisoned in a cellar. Soon she has escaped, and is dashing through the streets on a motor-cycle, for it is the opening night of the show and in half an hour she is due to give her apache danCe. She gives the dance—but her fellow apache turns out to be one of the gangsters, who has stunned her usual partner and stolen his costume in order to get into the cabaret and shoot the manager. It is remarkable that kiss Courtneidge gets through the resulting rough-and-tumble without breaking a limb.
Miss Courtneidge has many gifts as a comedienne—almost too. many for one film. Aunt. Sally_ suffers to some extent from having to provide her with such a lot of varied opportunities ; the action pauses while she throws in a burlesque song or it little character acting, and the pro. duction lacks that flowing energy- with which Hollywood knows so well how to invest these musical extravaganzas. Also the gangster pare is rather weak ; American gangsters are never very convincing in an English social atmosphere, perhaps because one cannot feel a corrupt judicial system behind them. Hence the middle, part of the film, while the gangsters are most active, tends to droop and drag ; but it begins well, with Miss Courtneidge as a girl from the provinces determined to get into cabaret somehow, and it ends in i lively whirlwind of stage spectacle and aerobatics.
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