Ordeal in a Courtroom
[_IBEL, a play by Edward Wooll, was a good example of the sort of thing Professor Isaacs warned us about in the first talk of his theatre series, when he spoke of the difference between good drama and mere good theatre. And, since Libel provided such exciting listening, it may equally be regarded as an example of the advantages of refusing to become an aesthetic wowser. Libel is concerned with the problem of a baronet who goes to the war and returns a different man. The setting is a court of law, concerned with establishing whether the hero is literally or merely figuratively a different man. We, the audience, were treated with almost Roman prodigality to the spectacle of raw and quivering human emotions impaled on nasty little points of law. The NZBS cast avidly devoured the meaty parts assigned them, and I felt that Olive Lucius’s playing of the flummoxed wife was as near as we’re likely to get to the incomparable Siddons.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 10
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168Ordeal in a Courtroom New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 776, 4 June 1954, Page 10
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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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