MANY DIMENSIONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 751, 4 December 1953, Page 14

MANY DIMENSIONS

THE BAIKIE CHARAVARI, a_ modern miracle play by James Bridie; Constable. English price, 8/6. N The Queen’s Comedy, James Bridie set forth somewhat indeterminately his challenge to Shakespeare’s As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods They kill us for their sport. In this play Bridie comes down to earth and deals with rebellious man himself. Punch is the representative, transmogrified into a retired knight of the British- Raj, and synthesised with Pontius Pilate. Both tried to be just rulers and both inquired "What is truth?" The legendary characters of Punch’s entourage are all here but, sometimes confusingly, suffer a sea change by the waters of the Clyde Estuary. Punch is whitewashed and the De’il himself is routed by Punch after the traditional slaughter of all the characters because they don’t know the answer to Punch’s question. Needless to say, Mr. Bridie offers no solution but philosophises with witty veracity, ‘ ery The play leaps gaily about from the plane of modern suburbia to the metaphysical and the legendary. There is pawky satirical and farcical] humour levelled at trivialities and at the profundities -- modern domesticity and American big business, State control and witchcraft, social conventions and theology. All these, and more beside, are grist to his milling wit. It is difficult to imagine that an audience will not be confused; there is plenty of something for everybody, but a risk of nobody being satisfied. The play wil] be a challenge to producers and well worth reading and presenta-

tion; but it cannot be said to add much to Bridie’s considerable stature as a

dramatist.

John V.

Trevor