PLAYS FOR NEW ZEALANDERS.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 5

PLAYS FOR NEW ZEALANDERS.

Sir-In "Angry Listeners," Ngaio Marsh suggests that if "low-brows" were to listen to plays by Bernard Shaw Ibsen, and a dozen other dramatists who have woven their plays round marriage, ownership of property, prize-fight-ing, moral responsibility, the colour-bar, the attracion between sexes, betting, strikes, social diseases, or keeping up appearances, they would probably find they enjoyed plays that made them use their wits. The programme sounds bleak to me. I can imagine many New Zealand women who, by setting themselves to dwell on their immediate worries, and their fear for the final fate of themselves, and their families, could work themselves into such a fit o: the "willies"

that they would regard Ibsen as pure farce. And I can imagihe many busy members of the listening public finding much of G,B.S.’s wit as so many wisecracks not always in the best taste; while I can see intelligent if not intellectual youths, when faced with the works of a dozen other playwrights muttering "Gosh! I’m sick of propaganda." I do not think it is the "low-brow" New Zealander’s fault that he does not listen to good plays or listen to bad ones. It is that the wrong kind of good play is presented to him. _ It will spell the end of acting when people go to a play to think instead of living an experience. It’s the low-brow’s right to applaud and huzzah when the play pleases and hiss and _ throw missiles when it displeases. The only pity is that the missiles often fall short and hit the wrong victim.

BEGGARS CAN'T BE CHOOSERS

(Dunedin).