V.U.C Dramatic Club

The activities of the Victoria University College Dramatic Club for the year ending October, 1934, although not so numerous or varied as those of other years, have resulted in a creditable profit. In these days of economic stringency, a cautious executive has persuaded us to measure success in terms of box office rather than oi bouquets. Our time-honoured policy of giving the student body only what is good and true and beautiful has had to be abandoned for the more honourable, but less attractive one, of paying off old debts. That much discussed, much criticised, much neglected function, the town production, was shelved, and all that wealth of talent and beauty which had flourished within our ranks has had to be dissipated in a number of play-readings, all of them interesting, and a few outstanding. The plays selected were varied in character, including a clever "thriller," "Ten Minute Alibi," a merry period comedy, "And So to Bed," and Messrs. Van Druten and Levy's incredible extravaganza, "Hollywood Holiday." This latter piece proved the most successful reading of the year. The sophisticated unpleasantness of Maugham's "Our Betters" did not interest its audience, but this was balanced by a delightful reading of "The Late Christopher Bean," surely the most refreshing comedy that has appeared within recent years. For a number of reasons, mentioned elsewhere, the town production was cancelled, but a very successful production of a farce, "While Parents Sleep," in the first term was so well attended that the Club will be able to begin the next year with a clean slate. It would be wise to mention here that it is the intention of the present Committee to recommend that the Wellington public be given an opportunity of admiring some little thing of ours next year, say, Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of An Author"; perhaps something improving—what of Ibsen's "Ghosts," or Strindbergs' "Father," or something agricultural by Mrs. Targuse? But do the Wellington public (or the student body for that matter) want to be improved? Experience has taught us a bitter lesson. The pill has to be thickly coated before they can be persuaded to so much as look at it.

But next year . . .

Could we not, in fine, evangelistic fashion, cast our lot on some blasted heath in the wilds of Newtown, and there delight the natives with cacaphonic comedy or murky melodrama? This would be the means of gauging our public nearer home, for what Newtown will applaud yesterday, Victoria will devour whole to-morrow.

And so, while critics gibber and fools belabour, the Dramatic Club, vigilant, omniscient, with one eye on the Muses and the other on Exile, has gone silently about its work of rehabilitation. For its programme of 1935 it has drawn on the great plays of five countries, and one or two continents. "Richard of Bordeaux," the finest historical drama of the decade, is to be the first reading of the year, and if a sufficient number of students can be attracted, vacational readings will be arranged. Perhaps one should mention that an entertainment, conducted under the auspices of the Club, will be held in the Gymnasium on November 30th. This will consist of a rehearsed play-reading, supper and dancing, all for the modest charge of sixpence.

And so we pass out of the doldrums into a great expanse of artistic endeavour; impressing on a certain illustrious traducer, that what he had come to regard as our twilight sleep, was in reality the hush before the dawn.