Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 25. No. 12. 1962
Festival Drama Lively
Festival Drama Lively
Interesting, lively and controversial drama marked the 1962 Drama Festival at Christchurch during Tournament. The adjudicator, Mr M. J. Glue was impressed with the originality and competence of the six productions. It was SRO in the Irish Society Hall on both Monday and Wednesday nights.
Auckland s Barnstable won the competition. The play, centred around a slightly dotty family in 8 crumbling English Stately Home which collapses around their ears towards the end of the play was only superficially a farce. The N. F. Simpson-type plot had plenty of satirical bite to it.
John Crawford was excellent as the sanctimonious vicar, and Ligita Maulics gave a virtuoso performance as the hysterical daughter. The producer was commended tided by the adjudicator as the best of the evening. The difficult staging and sound effects were handled skilfully.
Vic's production of Bruce Mason's Bonds of Love unfortunately had to follow two broad farces, and heavy meat of Mr Mason's exercise in New Zealand morals was received by a restless audience The adjudicator may have been a little unkind when he said that it sounded like "a kindergarten reading of The Miller's Tale" but at times the cast seemed unable to handle the forthright dialogue in a convincingly Idiomatic manner
Con O'Leary's Con Arts gig was Corso's In This Hung-Up Age. O'Leary really swung as Poetman. The rest of the cats just weren't hip on the beat semantics. It's a drag, but if you don't blow American, then it's like Dead City. The cats were straining at vowels and sometimes just straining.
Canterbury produced the only original play of the series—Jeremy Agar's existentialist potpourri The Bath, a rather obvious pastiche, as the programme admits, of the Big Three: Ionesco, Becket and Pinter. The plot revolves around two people (Habakkuk and Gomorrah) who have Climbed the Stairs up from the Dustbins and Reached the Bathroom. They get into the Bath. You read what you want into that.
Several other representatives of the human race appear to say Significant Things. The best scenes involved Mike Noonan as the English to off, who managed to be brilliant and completely non-significant.
Massey's Two Gentlemen of Soho A. P. parody of Shakespeare, was probably the comic hit of the. The Massey actors, In particular Glenda Farrell, who earned the unofficial award as best actress of the evening handled the ham well and with a good sense of timing, Otago did not have quite so much success with Michael de Ghelderode Three Actors and Their Drama and uneven acting somewhat spoiled the effect of the various twists the plot and changes in the personae of the charcters. Lincoln, last year's winners, staged Birds of a Feather J. O. Francis, which was rather too naive for a University audience, but was very competently produced and acted.