Grass Again!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 18

Grass Again!

[LORD DUNCANNON’S play WNébuchadnezzar is the most successful attempt I have heard to retell Biblical

stories in colloquial speech. I would not have thought that lively, almost smart modern dialogue, could blend so well with the actual words of the Book of Daniel, but they did, in what was often a most piquant fashion. It had the effect of projecting the play on two levels; one, the ordinary. commerce of social life for which the glib talk was appropriate, and on the other hand, the lofty issues of destiny and judgment were justifiably couched in the weighty splendour of the authorised version. Nebuchadnezzar was played as a demoniac character from a psychiatrist’s casebook, in the tones of a witty, if hysterical screech owl, by Donald Wolfit, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were given sketch form as real people. There was, however, no psychological explanation of how they passed through the fire unscathed, and in the terms in which the play was presented to us, Nebuchadnezzar should have sought one. Daniel was brisk and efficient and rather tiresomely right all along. Nebuchadnezzar’s reduction to beast’s estate was presented as a comic predicament, and his moan of "Grass again!" when his chamberlain brings his victuals, gives an idea of the ironic flavour given to the story by its modern dress. Nebuchadnezzar, chastened by his vision of God, was a tame character, a poor old man, simply. One could riot help preferring the zest and vain glory of the old rascal who opened the play.