Drama

'After the Rain'

Hampstead Theatre Club in London was the home and origin of the plays of Harold Pinter, of whom everybody has heard. It was also that for John Bowen, of whom nobody has heard, save the Dramatic Society. It is presenting one of his plays. After the Rain, in the Memorial Theatre, from Monday 28 July to Saturday 2 August. Some information we got from them makes it out to be absolutely fascinating.

The whole thing in set in the future; a professor lectures his students on the origins of their society. These were a handful of survivors from a huge flood, clinging to a raft on the face of the waters, their old civilisation destroyed. This was in 1970. The lecture is illustrated by a bunch of prisoners, who, for rehabilitation purposes reenact those fateful hours on the raft.

Thus, it seems, one gets both the meaty drama of conflict of characters, as in Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Porter's Ship of Fools and the trendy alienation effects of the Brechtians, as in the New Theatre's recent War and Peace.

The producer is supposed to be pretty good. She's Pam Hewes who has just come back to New Zealand from an acting career in England. She was on T.V. in The Four Seasons of Rosie Carr and some other plays, and her husband, Bute, produces "Looking at New Zealand" here (not that that's relevant, but it's nice to be able to place these people, don't you think?)

The society's note said: 'The play is highly stylised, the set and costumes simple." I should think they need to save money somewhere; I'm told the bill for having the scripts duplicated by a public typist came to $160.

B.E.