A PLAY WRITTEN IN HAWKE'S BAY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 26, 23 October 1937, Page 11

A PLAY WRITTEN IN HAWKE'S BAY

Generallv spealting the metliods used in selecting plays for amateur production are quite arbitrary, being based entirely upon tke personal judgment of the read-ei. Assuming that a prospective play'has. b§en read by.a committee and its suitability put to the vote, the . production or not of that^ play follows autoihatically on" the' per-* sonal opinion of the majority of voters, quite irrespective of the innate goodness or badness'of the play itself. For it must be noteci that though Mrs A. may think the play admiraL.ie in all- respects; this does not- in tho ieast alter the.fact that, from a critical point of view, it may be extremely bad. In other words, personal judgment may be nght or it may be wrong: in either case it is of no value unless it is based upon some rational theory of values, a's true criticifem must abvays be. kkom,this it follows that criticism can never be wrong. Thero is, unfortunately, much good printer's iu'i marshalled to imitato criticism, but a superiicial investigation will usualiy show that personai opinion has usurped the place of its powerful rfelation. This may seem a- long step from tho selection of plays, : but it is not so. Let us . take a common case. Mrs A. (or Mf'B., or'Miss C. for the matter of -that) reads a play which contams a meaty-part drawn on the lines which Mrs' A.,- e.g.,- imagines is her particular strengtn. Bhe reads herself into the part, subordinating all the other characters- to her own interpretation, quite forgetting that" the. play is vastjy. more .important tlian her pertormance. ,She believes that she earn play Ihe part well — and sho probably can — so she pushes the play for all that she .is worth. What she does not realise. when she advocates its production rs1 that she has completely swamped her critical faculty— if she ever had one — in her own personal opinion. Wlieref. she went wrong was in attempting to^ make a personal thing of a mattor thati siiould have been lef fc entirely to criti-, cism. Criticisni — the critical faculty — canj only function apart from any personalj or prcconceived ideas; and it cannotj > function . beside any set stanqard. It) must stand by itselif as an expressioni of truth. ■ In the casc of a play the unity and harmony of its sever'al parts must be refleeted in terms expressed apart from the' play itself. To say that ' ' Hamjet ' ' is a greater play than "The Mecrry Wives of Windsor' ' has no critical value at all, eveh though it may be true, as it presupposes that values of ' " Hamlet " and "The Merry Wives ". are known. If these values are known, then all that is necessary is known, and the'comparative statement is rednndant. Criticism, then, is a reflection of truth in terms other than those of the object criticifeed, and it is exercised' by the rarest of all. the artistic fa-culties.' For the .critical faculty. musjt have such perfeet poise in tho selection and combinatioii of its objeetive matferial- that the result of the subjeetive' tfeatment of that material (and this subjeetive treatment is the essential functibning of the critical faculty) will be coherent, logical, and, above all, utterly true. This is all apropos a play that has been sumbitted to me for criticism. It is called "Falls the Shadow," and is, I presume, by a Hastings resident; this, however, is beside the point. I have applied my critical faculty to it; I have dissected it and I have found a certainv amount of material in it that does not fit in with the generai scheme. This also is beside tho point, which is that the play as a whole is good, and in parts so truly moving that one is caught up in its atmosphere and carried away on the wings of the author's invention. It has power and beauty and sensitive dialogue that at times haunts one's imagination. In fact, "Falls the Shadow" is worth while. The story, wnich is set in England, a few years hence, portrays the reactions of four personalities under the imminent fear of the outbreak of a great European war. ' The second' act closes with tho realisation that England has been invaded. In; the third act a new set of circumstances is revealed. The war is over. and England is under 'a dictatorship. This act does not sustain the earlier

dramatie thome and "probably rcquires some reconstruction" I -should liko to; suggest that' the Little -Theatre Society, or any other group with sufficient vision to strike • out a new line, should get in touch-with the author with a view to producin'g the-'play. I will wager that they will not Tegret it, as I know that the production would be of inestimable value to the future work of the author. JEREMY COLLIER," JUNIOR.