LONDON TO OTAUTAU

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 399, 14 February 1947, Page 8

LONDON TO OTAUTAU

Overseas Players Tour New Zealand Backblocks

HEN a theatrical company known as Whitehall Productions Ltd., of Londen and Australia, finishes its current tour, it will have played in 57 different varieties of New Zealand cities, towns and villages. And the unusual thing about it is that this company does not seem as anxious to make money as to take the theatre to the people---particularly the people to whom theatrevisiting is a matter of geographical difficulty. Before the end of the tour the company will make a recording of a play for the NZBS. This will be either The Barretts of Wimpole Street (by Rudolph Besier), or Autumn Crocus (by C. O. Anthony, later known as Dodie Smith). It was Kathleen Robinson, leading lady, founder, and a director of the concern who explained in an interview the reasons for her company’s pioneering ventures in the outback of New Zealand. "So," I said, "yours is really a tour to spread the culture of the theatre through good plays?" "Yes, though that word culture has been oversaid and overwritten. Let’s put it this way. You have asked me why we go to the out-of-the-way places. Simply because people cannot help living in them, and why should they be deprived of the theatre? They enjoy it; we enjoy it, and everybody’s happy." "Do you present.the plays exactly as in the cities?" "Exactly, with the scme sets and flats which we can adapt to fit any stage. And we wear the same fine gowns." "How can this pioneering effort, with all its transport costs, be made to pay?" "Financially-well, it’s all right. But it pays us over and over again in the appréciation for breaking new ground." The Wrong Idea At this point! Richard Parry, a Welsh actor, and leading man in the comnany, joined us. "Some people get the wrong idea," he said, "At a dinner table near us in a North Island hotel, a man who had no idea who we were remarked, ‘this show can’t be much good or it wouldn't come here.’ But though we have had many packed houses, and some not quite full, we are always asked to return, with promises of larger audiences." The company visited Otautau, in the extreme south-west of the South Island. The town hall held 480 people. Garden seats were put in and people stood at the back. The company played to an audience of 500, from the town and. surrounding district. "And what we like so much about this tour is the receptive mood of the people," said Miss Robinson, "They come along prépared to accept us and enjoy what we give them. They take serious plays very well indeed." "Green Dolphin" Transport Staging plays in small towns presents difficulties The other evening, in the absence of a dressing-room, the company had to improvise quarters at the side of the stage-a communal affair. For trans‘port they use their own hired bus, chris-

tened the "Green Dolphin." It’s big’ and comfortable and takes them wherever they want to go. Like some other actors who have visited New Zealand recently, both Miss Robinson and Mr. Parry deplore the absence of a national theatre here. They think that if all the many members of the amateur groups would add, say 10s. a year to their subscriptions, the Ce ee ee

easily raise a fund to send outstanding performers for overseas study, or induce first-class producers to come here and teach dramatic art. "If you had a- national theatre, presenting the really good plays, you could say to the overseas people:--‘So-and-so, one of our members, has been in this play or that in our national theatre.’ He would have some status, the theatre movement being a sort of guarantee, 4 launching place. You could eyen, in. tims, send a whole company overseas. said Mr. Parry. ’ i petA z® "Don’t think we want to , belittle what has already been don? in New Zealaid," said Miss Robinson.-"Some of the repertory work is vety good. But you cou! import somebody to teach the latest pleving methods; mek> it a full-time job." sas Aa cid "What do you mean by latest playing methods?" : "Well, there’s still a general view ‘that an actor should never turn his. back on the audience and move upstage. It’s 15 years since that prohibition was removed in England. There is a way. of doing it, yet still getting the lines home effectively." Temperament-Bad Temper? Both Miss Robinson and Mr. . Parry were refreshing in their remarks about temperamental tantrums in an actress -or an actor, for that matter. It. depended a good deal, they said, on»the type of control of the company. Mr. Parry: "It’s often nothing »more than showing off." ey », 4 ws

Miss Robinson (reservedly); "U-m, up to a point. But sometimes it’s an outlet, for an "actor’s emotions are always pretty near the surface, and there’s .a certain tenseness before and during a show." "Someone once said that temperament was, simply bad temper too old to be spanked. Do you agree?" They thought there was a good deal in tha®-just acting off the stage. "But we," they said, "have too much to think about and do to.bother with that sort of exhibitionism." "I suppose, in a brilliant person, one could put up with it," said. Miss Robinson, "but a really brilliant person would be above such nonsense." Kathleen Robinson has been active in theatre work for 16 years. She was first trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1930 and two. years later joined Dame Sybil Thorndike on her tour of New Zealand and Australia with G. B. Shaw plays.’ "Why did you take up’ management with ‘all its extra work?" "When I returned to England I felt that it was important to know both sides of the business, for after all the theatre flourished in the days of the old actormanagers, the Kembles and Irving, In 1935,° with two others, I took over a London theatre to present try-out plays ‘in_the: West End. That was very inte:esting. But more fascinating’ still were the two tours I took in Scandinavia. . "It was then that I realised the theatre can be a good deal more than just entertainment, It can make itself a world’s _ Soodwill "factor. When an English or other. ,company visits another country there is reciprocal understanding and appreciation of ways of life and outlook." "Would you say that the fheatre could identify itself with Norman Corwin’s one-world concept?" ~

"Perhaps I wouldn’t go quite so far as that, but it would certainly help. When a touring company visits a place, it leaves some mark of its own behind it, and takes something away. Both Mr. Parry and I feel that a company giving the people well-constructed and wellpresented plays’ has its reward in personal. satisfaction, whether it makes @ Jot

of money or not."

E.R.

B.