Theatre
The Pohutukawa Tree. By Bruce Mason. Price Milburn. 194 pp. Many people throughout New Zealand heard the adaptation of Mr Mason's play presented last winter on ZB Sunday Showcase. They now have an opportunity of reading “The Pohutukawa Tree” in its final form as a threeact play.
The first thing that will strike the attentive reader is the uniform professional competence with which Mr Mason sets the scene, develops the plot, and brings everything together to the tragic denouement in the last act. Would it be rash to say that no previous New Zealand play exhibits the same taut firmness of structure? Every speech is in its place, and there is not a superfluous phrase. Indeed, an examination of the playwright’s sense of control is one of the pleasures * reader can get from a play in this class. In “The Pohutukawa Tree” there are two races and two worlds, one of which is fast giving way before the other. This fact is presented without rhetorical flourish; “The Pohutukawa Tree” reads like a strictly fair statement. Nevertheless, most of those who take up the play will soon see where the author's sympathy lies. More important still, they may gain some feeling for the respect, to use an old-fashioned word, with which he treats of the cherished ideals of the Maori race. Aroha Mataira is in some sense an embodiment of these ideals, although she is far from being an idealised figure. Obviously there are limits to her comprehension and her tolerance. But the truth, and it is perhaps a painful truth, is that, as a human being, she is superior to everyone else in the play. This is felt to be natural and inevitable from the end of the first long scene in Act I. In creating the character of Athol Sedgwick, a Church of England parson, Mr Mason has attempted to redress the balance somewhat. Sedgwick does give the impression of being at once spiritUallyminded and humane; but he does not act upon the reader’s senses with much authority or command his attention as Mrs Mataira always does. Of the other pakehas. Mrs Atkinson alone has a glimmer of feeling for true refinement. The rest of them are without any unbiassed standards of reference whatever. Not that Mr Mason is an enemy to his fellow men; "The End of the Golden Weather” proved that quite the contrary is true; but he has no illusions about people like Atkinson, and McDowell and Robinson. Nor is he exactly kind to Sylvia and Dr. Lomas. As for Claude Jphnson, he is the clown at the wedding, and crass is the only word to describe him. The Maori characters,
Queenie and Johnny, are foolish and weak, the predestined victims of ruthless men. But vulnerable as they are, they have within themselves rich sources of consolation and even of healing. At least they can begin again. Even in the worldly sense they are apparently indispensable. Atkinson. for instance, cannot tend his orchard successfully without them. It is also interesting to note that Sedgwick, who came to New Zealand without prejudices, could even see some of the positive values that sprang from the old communal life of the pa. Mr Mason never insists; that is part of his accomplishment as a writer; but all these things are implicit in “The Pohutukawa Tree.” No doubt, such reflections appear somewhat sombre in tone; but, after all, they set the play in a context that is much wider than the purely local one; and this is the measure of Mr Mason's achievement.
"Candidates must have . . . a first class command of the English language . . . The ability to successfully liaise with technical and sales people is essential.”—From a Birmingham firm's advertisement for a staff vacancy.
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Bibliographic details
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Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 3
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625Theatre Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 3
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