Professional Touch

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 804, 17 December 1954, Page 10

Professional Touch

T. JOHN ERVINE’S Friends and Relations (1YA) didn’t strike me as being up to old Abbey Theatre standards. The best scene, the reading of a caustic will to a group of grasping relatives, came in the first act, and after that, the play resolved itself into a series of predictable relationships between the chief legatee, the deceased’s illegitimate daughter and ‘ miscellaneous spongers. But the suave playing of the New Zealand Players under the direction of Richard Campion made this ordinary piece very agreeable listening. Although individual Players have been heard before in NZBS plays, this was the first time I had heard them work as a body, and they proved as satisfying and co-ordinated a team on the air as they are on the stage. It was also a pleasure to hear some new voices in a locally-produced play. From uniformly good playing, it is not easy to select anyone for special praise, but I thought Michael Cotterill’s Adam was a nicelyshaded character and that John Gordon’s reading of the will was a gem. One curious feature-was Charles Sinclair deliberately imitating Charles Laughton, or-although I’ve never noticed it on the stage-does he always speak like that?