The Old Vic
\X 7E may have seen longer and more patient queues than have followed the Old Vic Company through the Dominion, but it is not easy. to think when. Nor can there often have been more disappointed people left at home. It is one of those cases in which it means something to say that the visit has been not so much a success as a triumph, and we owe it first of all, and most of all, to the British Council. Nor must we forget when we thank the British Council that we are thank-: ing the British people, who. can still spare time, money, and thought in all their distractions to pass gn the fruit of British culture. The Council is the intelligent general staff which conducts these operations, but the money it spends is paid for by British men and British women who agree through their representatives in Parliament to be taxed for this high, remote, and often quite obscure purpose. We thank the ‘British Council; but we thank the company too, who have never been professionals only, working for a fee and not caring where it came from, but profit-sharers in their art among themselves and conscious servants of the public at the same time. Whatever credit we allow our local societies for keeping the stage tradition alive in New Zealand, the fact is that the theatre for most of us means films only: or did until a month ago. If. it now means more than that, the explanation is not merely that flesh-and-blood performiances have been given, but that they have been given by a company which caught the public imagination and accepted the responsibility this imposed on it. Because they were human beings they were subject to all the strains that weariness and boredom brings, and to all the irritations of propinquity; but they went through every performance to the last with that contagious zest which separates art from mechanics. It has been a powerful reinforcement of the campaign for a permanent company of our own, paying their way when they can, but guaranteed by the taxpayer against extinction. »
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 488, 29 October 1948, Page 5
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357The Old Vic New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 488, 29 October 1948, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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