A Craftsman

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 887, 3 August 1956, Page 22

A Craftsman

OHN V. TREVOR delivered a talk last week on the Art and Craft of Terence Rattigan, recorded in a manner which did service neither to spékker nor subject. Was there a boiler factory close at hand? I could believe so from an insistent buzz enlivened by a mysterious clanking. Further, the sense of his opening remarks .was shattered by a skittish gramophone arm, which hopped several grooves, hurtling me from the Restoration to the 19th century with scant regard for historical propriety. Still further, Mr. Trevor elected to speak at a speed which left me hoping he would catch the train so evidently about to depart without him. "That's John V. Trevor, that was!" I gasped at its close. These reservations apart, I enjoyed the talk, and wish to grapple a moment with its substance. Mr. Trevor Claims that Rattigan is as underrated as afi artist as Maugham used to be, (continued on next page)

possibly; that each play he has written marks a technical advance, fair enough; and in his sole failure, Adventure Story, the chronical play of Alexander the Great, he finds evidence that great plays lie in Rattigan’s imagination, waiting to be unleashed on us. We shall see. He finds The ‘Sleeping Prince a masterly piéce d’occasion, agreed; he thought it well played here, I beg to-differ. He finds no single memorable line in Rattigan, but he ascribes this to be poverty, generally, of his themes. Given a great theme, he infers, you will get memorable language. True or false? False, I think. There is nothing enormous about the themes of Love’s Labours Lost or Twelfth Night, yet their language is memorable. The truth is, surely, that speech is no longer primary in the theatre, is no longer its basic instrument. If it becomes so again, we can then expect memorable language of high import.