"HOUSEBOAT PHILOSOPHY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 119, 10 August 1927, Page 15

"HOUSEBOAT PHILOSOPHY

“THE NEW MORALITY” “The New Morality,” a comedy in three acts, by Harold Chapin, produced by the Grafton Shakespeare and Dramatic Club, at the Grafton Library last night. Cast: Colonel Trevor Jones Mr. A. R. Duncan. Betty Jones, his wife Miss Rosie Kidson. Alice Meyne, her friend Miss W. M. Softley. Geoffrey Belasis, K.C., her brother Mr. Rex Fairburn. E. Wallace Wister, a neighbour Mr. Ernest Blair. Wooton, a manservant Mr. A. V. Penr. Lesceline, maid Miss Nancy Redstone. To tackle a comedy with as subtle an edge on it as Chapin’s was a courageous undertaking for the members of the Grafton Shakespeare and Dramatic Club. The play’s difficulties having been overcome are tributes to the players. “The New Morality” was a most creditable performance, surprising to those who have not realised that the little theatre movement had taken root in the suburb of Grafton, and was plugging away, pleasurably, with the work of bright modern people. Houseboats seem to be in their essence humorous things, and Chapin has used them to frame, or rather float, a “situation,” which requires three acts to straighten itself out. The play has not the delightful artificiality which Lonsdale would have lent to it; it seems to plumb certain depths of philosophic thought, and yet one is never quite sure that the author has not his tongue in his cheek. Even the oration which contains the very name and motif of the play comes from the mouth of Wister, who at the time is in grave difficulties with his legs and his sibilants, and who plunges overboard to punctuate his last period. There were various theories put forward to account for the action of Mrs. Betty Jones, a houseboat dweller on the Thames, in the hottest summer known, in grossly insulting her houseboat neighbours, the Wisters. The obvious reason was that Colonel Ivor Jones has made a lap-dog of himself in dancing attendance on Mrs. Wister. Wister, spurred on by his wife, informed the Jones’s that he would bring on a criminal libel action, and the butler, becoming anxious, wired for Betty’s brother, Geoffrey Belasis, K.C. Betty will not apologise. Wister is full of whisky and insistence. Jones is fumingly sympathetic with his wife, ar.d Belasis is aloofly legal-minded. Tills is the combination of temperaments which makes the play. The weight of the words fell on Miss Rosie Kidson, as Betty Jones, and Ernest Blair, as Wister. It was no straight comedy part that Miss Kidson had to play, but a study of enigmatical womanhood, a queer mixture of tears and jealousy and humour. She carried it through with restraint, and few faults, and gave it the charm of her personal appearance. Ernest Blair did not overdo the drunken insistence of Wister in the slightest. A good • performance, this. Rex Fairburn had [ the correct Upper Court appearance and intonation as Belasis, K.C.. and A. R. Duncan, though slightly wooden, . made a creditable colonel. As the ■ ex-batman Wooten, A. V, Penn was convincing.