Nightmares

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 388, 29 November 1946, Page 10

Nightmares

RITERS of stories and plays which rely for effect on the ghostly, the macabre, the fantastic, are up against a tricky problem. If they lay it on too thickly, their tales are not even momentarily authentic; if they don’t lay it on thickly enough, they fail to arouse the listener's imagination and the story loses its kick. Victor Andrews, who wrote the NZBS production, The Man Who Could Make Nightmares,. has succeeded in walking the tightrope between these two abysses of failure. His ‘grisly play is an undoubted success, mainly because he knows the exact value of understatement. His "little man" has the horrible faculty of being able to project a nightmare into someone else’s sleeping brain; and does so with cumulative effect right through the play, blackmailing himself right into the upper-income bracket of big business. The nightmares are partly

described for the listener’s benefit, but the real horror of them (described as The Thing) is merely implied; it does not manifest itself to the listener any more than it did to the dreamers-but I assure Mr. Andrews it was present in no uncertain manner in at least one listener’s subconscious. Mr. Andrews made his best point at the end of his play. The last nightmare was the one which killed the dreamer, the "little man" himself, instigator of the whole series of devilments; and it was wisely left to the listener to imagine what happened when The Thing and its victim at last met face to face.