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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion At Victoria University College, Wellington, N. Z. Vol. 24, No. 4. 1961

Sacrilege

Sacrilege

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," put on in the Botanical Gardens Sound-shell as part of the festival of Wellington, was a pleasantly undevout affair.

In a materialistic era art tends to become magnified into a magical pseudo-religion, an end in itself, and Shakespeare is one of the canonized saints.

The producer was the enterprising Miss Nola Millar, Prime Mover of the New Theatre Company. This presentation will be taken round the colleges in Wellington and the Hutt Valley.

Miss Millar is indulging in her liking for modern dress, the open stage, and new angles to the play.

On the second night the pace was very slack. Much of the acting was very amateurish. Most of the fairies seemed to be badly cast. But good performances were given by Michael Haigh (Bottom), Peter Barlow (Flute), Janny Barlow (Helena) and Anne Burnett (Hermia).

Acting in the open air had its complications. The intrigues of fairy-land were several times drowned out by passing aircraft. The children sitting up the front made a positively Elizabethan audience, they shouted "Sputnik" at Oberon, whose fairy costume did look like a space-suit, "Heehaw" at Bottom, and "She's changed her hair" at poor Titania on the second night.

One feature which was given remarkable prominence by the cuts, was the sheer slapstick silliness of the Pyramus play. The full-blooded tragic death scene of Pyramus and Thisbe was extraordinarily funny.

Another thing was the extent to which Shakespeare is making fun of bad plays, pretentious actors, and his audience. After his Ass's head is removed, Bottom solemnly announces: "I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream . . . Mail Is but an Ass." Then, now only one long scene away, Puck announces the Epilogue:

"Think, but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, While these visions did appear..."

We left, working that one out.