Summer Mirth as Winter Comes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 6

Summer Mirth as Winter Comes

Bottom (awaking): When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my next is "Most fair Pyramus.’’ Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! ~ Starveling! God’s my life! Stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a .most rare vision. I have had- a dream, past the wit ef man to say what dream it was ... And, most dear actors, eat no onions or garlic, for.we are to utter sweet. breath, and I do fot doubt but:to hear them say, it is a swéet comedy. . . : OTTOM THE WEAVER is one of the great comic characters of the stage, a boisterous figure of fun who will soon be seen by audiences in 25 New Zealand towns and cities, roaring his tidiculous lines or prancing and gesticulating in his ass’s head. He will be played by John Gordon, a member of the New Zealand Players’ Company who are touring the country this winter in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is the Players’ fourth tour as a professional repertory company since their fOimation 12 months ago, and their first Shakespearian production. The pro-

ducer, Richard Campion, has assembled for it the largest cast, and it will play the most exacting itinerary of any of the Company’s tours. One problem that the company was faced with in this play-the provision of the incidental music which comes into a number of the scenes-has been overcome with the co-operation of the NZBS. Last week in Wellington ten members of the National Orchestra recorded music which had been specially written for the play by David Farquhar, a lecturer in music at Viétoria University College. These recordings will be played through an amplifier at each production. The music, with the relevant extracts from the dialogue spoken by the actors themselves, was also made into a radio programme which will be broadcast from National stations in coming weeks. The programme was heard from 2ZB last Sunday, May 30, and will be broadcast from the other ZB stations on the Sunday before the play opens in each centre. A visitor to the headquarters of the New Zealand Players in Bond Street,

Wellington, at any time during the past month or so would have been impressed by the activity stimulated by a tour of such magnitude. When The Listener called 2 few weeks before opening night, the company’s designer, Raymond Boyce, was working from his watercolour sketches on the costumes of Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Fairies. In the costume-room his. assistants were cutting out and pinning up materials for the attendant fairies, Pease-Blossom, Cob,web, Moth and Mustard-Seed. Mr. Boyce talked about his ideas for the production, which were aimed at getting as much light and airiness into it as he could. He showed us his

set models, and demonstrated ~~ the ingenious arrangements of wires inside the papier-maché framework of Bottom’s ass’s head, which are so placed

that when the actor speaks the ass’s jaw moves in synchronisation with his words. In the properties room next door spears and other accoutrements were being cut out of brass and gilded felt for the Athenian courtiers, Theseus, Lysander and Demetrius. Leather aprons, pouches, >

bails of thread and various rustic tools of trade were being made for the socalled Athenian Players: Quince, a carpenter; Snug, a joiner; Bottom, a weaver; Flute, a bellows-mender; Snout, a tinker; and Starveling, a tailor. In the business offices the new business manager of the company, K. B. O’Brien, and the touring manager, Charles McCormick, were worrying over the problems of transport, accommodation and theatre-bookings. But the real business’ of rehearsal was carried out mainly in the gymnasium of Wellington Boys’ College. Here The (continued on next page) :

Listener attended the first full company call for the production, and heard one of the directors of the New-Zealand Players, G. H. A. Swan, speak about their achievements in the past year and the prospects to come. Here, too, the producer, Richard Campion, who is also a director of the company, talked about his days on tour with A Midsummer Night's Dream in Britain and the ‘Continent, when he was stage manager for the Young Vic production of it by George Levine. On a mock-up. rostrum Bottom. was declaiming the hilarious lines of his "sweet comedy" about the deaths of: Pyramus and Thisbe. The Man in the Moon stood on a stepladder, and his dog, a black-and-white mongrel collie which has been specially taken on by the company for a small barking part, joined in the fun with enthusiasm at the appropriate moment. Mr. Campion said that after studying at the Old Vic Theatre School in London (where he worked under Glen Byam Shaw, now a director at Stratford-upon-Avon, and Michel Saint-Denis, now head of the London Theatre School) he toured Britain and Europe with the Young Vic Company in 1949, They took two plays with them on tour, Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, and A: Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the latter he was stage manager, and the production was by George Levine, who this year is re-producing the play for the Stratford-upon- Avon Company, with Anthony Quayle in the role of Bottom. "There is no doubt that the Victorians, in their productions of The Dream, stamped it rather heavily as a masque, emphasising the pageantry and the music, so that the poetry and the magic dropped out,’ Mr. Campion said. "Nowadays the emphasis is the other way, and in this production we are trying to create an atmosphere of the mystery of night in the- forest, with the attendant fairies conceived as spirits of the woods. This is quite different from the ideas of Harley Granville-Barker, for instance, who once produced the play with the fairies clad stiffly in cloth-of-gold, after the style of Javanese dancers." Mr. Campion said that he was also trying to get away from George Levine’s style of production, which was too sharp and too inclined to the grotesque in its handling of the nymphs and sprites for his taste. He aimed at a softer touch. He thought the cast he had assembled for the present production was a very even one, and he added that Susan Tunnington and Rilla Stephens, who play the parts of Hermia and Titania respectively. were both former members of the Old Vic School, as well as Raymond Boyce and himself. "So, although the Old Vic School and the Young Vic Company are no longer in existence, their influence will continue to be seen in the theatre, even in such a distant place as New Zealand," he said. In his address to the Players, Mr, Swan said that the Company was now 12 months old, and that the previous year had been largely a formative period in which naturally a certain amount of time had been devoted to finding out where the company’s faults lay, and in solving problems posed by the complications of travel and transport in a difficult geographical country like New Zealand. He said that the company had been formed by Richard and Edith Campion to entertain New Zealanders in the flesh and blood theatre in a permanent way, and also to make a worth-while contribution to the social and cultural life of the country, and help mould a New Zealand idiom. He mentioned the inroads made on our thought and expression by the cinema and radio, and said that where a similar situation had arisen in Canada a Royal Commission had been set up to discover ways of preserving a Canadian outlook. "We must develop a New Zealand outlook, and what better medium is there than the theatre?" he said. The New Zealand Players’ Foundation, a voluntary group aimed at supporting the Players’ Company, had committees actively at work in over 30 towns and cities, and a nation-wide membership of more than 8000. Even in towns like Otorohanga, where there was no Foundation committee, citizens had banded themselves together to ask the Players to perform in their town. The Otorohanga group sent with their request full details of the hall in which the play would be put on, and the probable numbers of audiences. A Midsummer Night's Dream was to be the first of an annual series of classical productions. Each year.such a play would be chosen in consultation with the Education Department, so that it could also be the subject of special study in schools and univérsities during the year. In return, the classical play would have a ‘more extensive itinerary than others in the Players’ repertoire. A Midsummer Night's Dream was going to Gisborne, the West Coast and other places which would normally be beyond the company *s budget. A special | essay and painting competition had been held in schools in conjunction with the proposed tour of the play. The competition had been advertised in the Education Gazette, and had drawn a large number of entries of a high standard. Mr. ‘Swan concluded by saying that New Pactatidacs ‘were more he "really first-class in, the arts," and that first-rate ould be obtained by the Players themselves only "bie a proment;! f dic and yet more work." ae ee. »