STAGE EXCITEMENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 555, 10 February 1950, Page 16

STAGE EXCITEMENT

COCK-A-DOODLE DANDY, by Seam O’Casey; MacMillan and Co. Through the British Council. English price, 6/-. HIS play has cast of about twenty, with the minor characters saying little, some merely entering and exiting. There are three scenes and one set. It is a producer’s nightmare in places with wild winds effecting some people on the stage and leaving others alone, with collapsing chairs which must give way at the exact moment, with ornaments on the women’s headgear rising up every now and again to become the horns of the devil, and with lightnings and blackouts by the dozen. It is a welter of fantas: o> ala bolism, superstition and argumen satire and mad humour, with a spot of cynicism thrown in for good measure. The symbolism is rather difficult to interpret at times, but in the long run the pattern is fairly clear cut. The message is that the natural joys and warmth of living

should never be regarded wi’ shame or fear, and that those who do so regard them become inthe end grey, lonely and hopeless. The theme, simplified, is the battle of the sexes, with the women coming cut of it all much better than the men. The language is what we have come to expect from O’Casey-half realism, half poetry. After almost continuous movement and excitement, verbal and visual, the play ends on a quiet subdued note which, on first reading, I thought mizht be anticlimax. On thinking it cver I can see that it would be very effective. This is a lovely, crazy play which, well done, would be a joy to watch.

Isobel

Andrews