Gentle Dominie
CAN think of no more appropriate St. Andrew’s Day feature than James Bridie’s Mr. Gillie, which 1YC gave us in the admirable BBC version, with James McKechnie splendid as the idealistic schoolmaster. As Scottish as haggis and as full of nourishment, Mr. Gillie considered the meaning of "success" through the apparently wasted life of the gentle dominie, whose swans all turn out to be geese, Yet, as the Heavenly Judge says, before seating him between Abraham Lincoln and John Wesley, "This man devoted his life to opening cages. . . He taught his birds how to fly; it wasn’t his fault if they were weak on the wing." Mr. Gillie does not seem to have succeeded on the stage. Yet the radio version, with its wit, its essential "metaphysical seri- — ousness" and its comic’ veliemence, held my delighted attention throughout. I should much like to hear the NZBS tackle Mr. Bolfry or The Dragon and_ the Dove, Shaw was a much greater dramatist than Bridie, yet there is a good deal of the crackpot pure and simple in Shaw. To my mind, Bridie was the saner and wiser spirit, and his swan-song, Mr. Gillie, is a monument to
Scottish common sense.
J.C.
R.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 652, 4 January 1952, Page 12
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203Gentle Dominie New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 652, 4 January 1952, Page 12
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