"THUNDER ROCK."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 223, 19 September 1940, Page 5

"THUNDER ROCK."

LONDON'S WAR MOOD.

RESPONDS TO PLAY.

(By VDCCEXT SHEEAN.) LOXDOX, August 20,

An American play called "Thunder Rock," by Richard Ardrey, has come nearer anything else to a statement of the emotional or philosophical content of many minde in embattled England to-day. '

In a war which has produced no songs, no slogans, no literature, this play from overseas has put the bare essentials of I England's hope into terms to which the| response hae been exceptional. Thei story of the play's fortunes is peculiarly] characteristic of London in war time, i The play closed in South Kensington, only to reopen at the Globe Theatre, one of the largest in London's West End where undoubtedly it -will have what used to be called in peace time, a "brilliant" premiere. In these days when scarcely anybody wants to go to the theatre, the way in which London has been stirred by this American play argues what many have long suspected —that people have been waiting for some fundamental, non-political statement of hope and faith keyed to the reality of the present hour. e The Fundamental Problem. "Thunder Rock" tells the etory of a young American, who, after 15 years of observation of the world's struggles— during which, apparently, he was a newspaper correspondent—retires to a hermitage as a lighthouse keeper on a small island in Lake Michigan. He wants to escape altogether from the life of his own time, and consequently creates associations on the solitary island by bringing back to life, in his own mind, some European immigrants who were wrecked on Thunder Rock in 1849.

Their profound pessimism over the fate of humanity arouses hie opposition and finally his return to present life in i the mood of combative determination land hope.

This bare outline gives little notion of how this play stirs and moves the London audience. People who may be) bombed any minute get the habit of thinking about fundamentals, and the play concerns the most fundamental of all problems, which is whether life in our time is worth living at aIL Wai Hoods Contrasted. In that sense it is a propaganda play, because its final conclusion is one of desperate courage and determination. To see ite altogether exceptional audiences —among which are Cabinet Ministers, officers in the Army and Xavy, high-brows, low-brows, and mid-dle-brows —so shaken and silenced with emotion is to realise how different the general mood is now from that of other wars. The great theatrical success here in the last war was "Romance"; and its post-war pendants, were "Journey's End" and "Cavalcade."

"Thunder Rock," a tenee and, atj times a gloomy interior drama, bears no resemblance to those romantic flights of other days. Apparently it was produced in Xew York monthe ago amidst general indifference, but it has found its audience now—an audience which emerges, often enough, with gas mask on shoulder, to the blacked-out streets and scans the summer sky.