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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 3, April 6th, 1949.

Sound Production

Sound Production

I hasten to add that the overall excellence of the acting, production and the satisfying nature of most of the play, are the more permanent impressions. The miming was occasionally scampered through, and from upstairs the stage looked definitely underlit. Wilder's technical innovations ranged from the supremely successful to the ordinary and ineffective. Nat Bcatus, who played the Stage Manager, very soon had the audience with him, but this was endangered by the heckling of the Woman in the circle, the man in the stalls, and the lady of culture. The fault was not Unity's but Wilder's. Somehow, on Wednesday, the wedding scene was not as good as it could have been; partly because the players were feeling their way, but more because the soliloquies misfired.

Wilder is a humanist, and though misty and sentimental, has his own values. I suppose he still means what he wrote at the end of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" .

"there is a land of the living and of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

The whole play (produced, by the way, by Nola Millar) is one of the finest things we have had these last few years.

J.M.T.