Preparations For Review

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 8

Preparations For Review

Christchurch p 1 a y • goers will next week preview a production of Christopher Fry’s “A Sleep of Prisoners.” commissioned for the Adelaide Festival. A set of a church interior, similar to one being built in Adelaide, has been constructed in Christchurch for the Voyage Theatre’s New Zealand tour. The play concerns the dreams of four prisoners of the Second World War inside a church. The set will have an altar, a lecturn, a pulpit and six supporting columns. Four prison beds have had to be specially made because no furniture store had any “off the peg” as rough as the ones the producer required. The Civic Theatre will be equipped with optical effects projectors. These will be fitted with attachments to show flames, falling water and waves. The play will require as many electricians as actors—four of each. The play will have a taped soundtrack of music specially composed by Britain’s foremost woman composer, Elisabeth Lutyens, who also wrote a score for Harold Lang’s open-air London production of “As You Like It.” The list of props includes “one fresh beetroot” for consumption on the stage at each performance. Tinned and pickled beetroot are listed as satisfactory alternatives. The photograph shows the four members of the Voyage Theatre. They are, from left, Greville Hallam, David Kelsey, Nicholas Amer, and Harold Lang. The company’s first presentation in Christchurch will

be “Macbeth in Camera" on Monday and Tuesday evenings. This is set in a rehersal room in a small country where a festival is taking place. Two actors and their director are rehearsing scenes from “Macbeth" with eight days to go. There is an argument with the iinpressario, a Shakespeare theorist who disagrees with their methods and even threatens to bring in a rival company, and the actors have to prove by demonstration that they are right.