CHRISTOPHER FRY'S PLAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 812, 18 February 1955, Page 5

CHRISTOPHER FRY'S PLAY

Sir-Mr,. Bruce Mason, like so many enthusiasts for certain phases of contemporary art, would bludgeon us‘ out of our doubts. For me the play raised a centemporary echo. The technique and tempo suggested that familiarised by Tommy Handley in TMA, probably of American origin. Of the matter, a student well read in French literature told me there were chunks of Rabelais and ideas from the French pessimists. The blasphemy and bawdy — Chaucer, and Shakespeare to a less extent, per-haps---haye been brought to us as part of the medieval scene. I do not object to writers using the same matter. I like Pascal's illustration from the game of tennis. Both players use the same ball but one of them places it better. Amidst the tempest of words in the last scene there half came through some lyrical outburst about the dawn. "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank"-a more leisurely approach and development, J. P. Firth made me see something of the beauty and mystical implications of the lines at 14. I think Shakespeare placed it better. Hamlet could put over some "rough stuff" at the erave of Ophelia and in what a setting. The plot is admitted to be thin, quite a Victorian happy ending to the problems, if any, raised. The pace was too rapid to let the lyricism sink in memory, apart from the guffaws of the groundlings at the bawdy. ; I agree that the eye of the producer is good, but is his ear wrong? Would the play have come off at a slower pace and without the groundlings? I turned the BBC production off. I do not remember any of Mr. Fry's coloured puddles, The most miraculous in my early youth was deposited in our backyard by an unprecedented rain storm. I laboriously shaped a stick with a blunt knife, erected a feather from the poultry yard ‘as sail and launched it on the deep. I saw three ships go sailing.

T. D. H.

HALL

(Wellington).