"TWELFTH NIGHT"
Sir---We in Greymouth, for obvious reasons, too seldom see anything like the New Zealand Players’ Twelfth Night. We are indeed grateful that they
do come, sometimes. But (if I may be forgiven this one "but"), it was sad to see an audience restive during ‘the opening scene, when some of Shakespeare’s loveliest poetry might have been enjoyed. "If music be the food of love, play on..." became trivial under the actor’s efforts to make it vehemently naturalistic. What should have been the slow, incomparable music of the words was replaced by mere fretfulness; and _ this, I could not help suspecting, was aggravated by the actor’s feeling the audience was not with him, and endeavouring to make good the lack by fretting the scene still further in an exasperated effort to get across, somehow, anyhow. He did not succeed, and Shakespeare was murdered in the effort. The audience did the only thing it could-waited to enjoy itself when the really first-rate fun-scenes came on. I am sure West Coast audiences are not bad, whatever may have been said about them in the past; and given, in such passages, pure poetry-speaking in a properly leisurely atmosphere and setting, could enjoy that, as well as Shakespeare’s infectious fun.
M. T.
WOOLLASTON
(Greymouth).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19560406.2.12.5
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 5
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211"TWELFTH NIGHT" New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 870, 6 April 1956, Page 5
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