Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 6. 1966.

'The Knack' was admirable

'The Knack' was admirable

Barbara Ewing. star of "The Knack." Photo by Warwick Teague.

Barbara Ewing. star of "The Knack." Photo by Warwick Teague.

The Knack is a farce with a politico-sexual bias. It may help its audience to identity their own. It is surprising that e film was at first banned from this country; in spite of the censor's kindly assumption to the contrary we are not immune from the attitude it attacks.

The play is about three men. Tolen is assiduously virile and has the knack. Colin is a schoolteacher, stutters and hasn't. Tom is a painter with more interests in people than how to seduce them. And they all live together in Colin's little house, where Nancy Jones drops by. looking for the Y.W. She is the Bait. fresh from the country and naive, the test site for conflicting outlooks and approaches. Colin, trembling, begins to begin advances. Tom attempts to promote the friendship. Tolen wishes to demonstrate Tolen. Tom wants to communicate. Tolen to dominate; Colin stammers between the alternatives.

It is a fine play, nicely focused on a single vigorous Jab at the ludicrous presence of totalitarianism in sex. Or rather at the stupidity and danger of asserting in human relationships the sort of brute control which leads, in another sphere, to political aberration. Characters develop through rapid dialogue and action. Situations raise confrontations crystallised Into a verbal antithesis. "Authority." says Tolen; "Calm" says Tom. The, play grows, and by a series of swift reversals frustrates sluggish expectation and leaves no one complacent of the outcome.

The Downstage production (in association with the New Zealand Theatre Centre) was admirable. Ann Jelllcoe requires a great deal of acting from her characters. What they do is as important as what they saw Bruce Myles played Tom with warmth, wit and energy, providing Just the vigorous anarchy to goad Tolen (Eric Wood). Tolen wore his assurance like a leather Jacket; his speech was faultlessly deliberate Tan Mune as Colin dithered admirably, though perhaps, even in dithering, there is a Are, a direction which he lacked. Barbara Ewing was Nancy. The play was directed with pace and precision by Dick Johnstone

A.M.B.