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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 10. May 22, 1974

Drama

Drama

All you can do when you can't persuade yourself that you have any thing significant say (hard enough at the best of times) is, to take recourse in chat. The trouble is that to chat you must have a fund of gossip and when I search back three rather empty weeks I find I have none, or none I could bear to repeal, I just don't know who's being doing what with whom and who thinks what about it; I'm not even sure if I knew what's what or who who is. All of you who care no doubt have adequate versions of your own already. At least I hope so — the thought that every one has been gaffing at their assorted navels in assorted seedy rooms, the thought that that's what holidays are really about is too painful, too truly absurd, to be entertained for a moment.

However, I did manage to struggle out of my torpor on the odd occasion, to participate in what called by called, given a fairly elastic imagination, events. Crowds of slyly expectant faces and a Dominion review that was almost excited led me to 'A Streaker Named Desire', late in its most successful season. I should have known better than to trust the Dominion, especially when sniggering over student antics, I should have examined the faces of those leaving the theatre, the dirty little buggers with their sweaty giggles! I must admit though, despite my determined and self-righteous melancholy, I was persuaded to laugh at some of the jokes I could hear; and that, like everyone else, I wished some of the streakers would slowdown, so that we could examine them more critically. And the matter of the play? I quote a famous man, versed in the art of plain-speaking:

"I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I mean" — I think I have it right, though it might be the other way round. Incidently, a prize unspecified, is owing to whoever can guess who thinks he said that, providing they can prove they are who they say they think they are, or at least give a good impersonation. It's not Levistrauss on cross-cultural communication, nor is it in Maori. My only other comment on the said Revue is, if I had had a petrol bomb handy and if I wasn't a coward, there would be five fewer people around pretending to be a band.

When I come to think of it, most of my current fantasies are somewhat murderous, which at least distiguishes me from Michael Wilson & Co, all they think of is sex. I think it began when all those guns and bombs went off on the Terrace and one night down there a man pointed a water-pistol at me from a second-story window. It's become a matter of getting them before they get me. I wanted to machine-gun the entire audience at Downstage the other night (not an uncommon response, I gather, among sensitive young folk in these troubled times), when I wasn't absorbed in The Sea or the girl in front, who looked like a heavy-weight Domonique Sandys. Quite a good production in some ways, but it's now finished its run. And Repertory wasn't giving complementaries for Boys in the Band. Imagine riding in on a big black horse or motor-bike or something and beating up on the little poofs.....The morals of todays theatre-goers being what they are — unhealthy, droolingly voyeuristic — the production was a total sell-out. It is also over.

Everything else on at the moment is strictly for the kiddies — I can't seriously recommend 'Toad of Toad Hall' to anyone but a budding pederast, so I suppose all other aging debauchees must entertain themselves or else go to the movies. If you don't like thinking but do like paper-mache monsters and sweaty breasts, try 'The Goldon Adventures of Sinbad'. Meantime, I'm back to hot chocolate, cold baths and a page or two of Pilgrims Progress before bed; it gets you through the term. And who knows, come November you might see me at the other end of a bazooka on top of the James Cook, the star of the ultimate in Live Theatre.

Martin Edmond,