THE SOLID GOLD CADILLAC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 34

THE SOLID GOLD CADILLAC

OOD entertainment in spite of some flaws, The Solid Gold Cadillac is the sort of play that might easily extend the run of box office success the New Zealand players had with Salad, Days. Not everyone enjoys satire, especially satire about American business life, but farce, apparently, has a wider appeal. The Players’ new production has both, though for my taste rather less bite than I expected and would have liked. Clearly the script was pretty broad for a start. but takine his cue from this

Richard Campion has evidently decided to gild the golden Cadillac. In the outcome several of his players have a pretty uninhibited romp. The Solid Gold Cadillac is an American play; George S. Kaufman and Howard Teichmann wrote it, and it’s set in New York and Washington. Four business executives bustle on to the stage when the curtain goes up -since the late chairman of directors, Ed. McKeever, left to take a Cabinet post they’ve been the big four of a multi-

millienaire campany, their main concern their own salaries. From the start the brakes are off, and wntil the entry of Mrs. Laura Partridgw, a small shareholder determined to ask unoomfortable questions, I was pretty damped eff by the antics of these golden hamsters, played by Jehn Huster, Bernard Shine, Michael Cotterill and Kenneth Adams. Of these, Mr. Adams, with a fine rash of nervous mannerigms to exploit, looks the most likey. This is a pretty unpromising start,

even 1f many members of the audience didn’t think so. But with Rosalind Atkinson’s entry as Mrs. Partridge it’s possible to take an interest in what’s going on. To buy her off, Mrs. P. is soon installed in the company’s office as Director of Shareholder Relations; and when presently she is sent off to Washington to see Ed. McKeever, who has been disappointingly slow in getting contracts for the old film, there’s a scene of rich comedy. Redmond Phillips makes McKeever a completely’ credible

character: the most fantastic bits of business go down, and’ a piece of elocution remembered from his schooldays is uproariously funny. With some good lines well handled, the play becomes, in fact, a personal triumph for Miss Atkinson and Mr. Phillips, from this point on the broader playing of the others is easier to take, and I came away feeling that I had been quite agreeably entertained. Not content with the limitations of the stage, The Solid Gold Cadillac uses a "giant television screen" to broaden its scene, and here, on a few hundred feet of-film shot by the National Film Unit, Winston McCarthy, Brian Brimer and Davina Whitehouse (who lays it on with a trowel) do their best to look like TV commentators. Between scenes there’s also a recorded commentary by Selwyn Toogood (he explains that this is really a fairy story), which somehow earns him a sort of pictorial co-star billing with the principals in the programme. Smaller parts in the play are adequately filled by Paddy Frost, Bridget Armstrong, Bryon O’Leary and the much-publicised (and very shapely) blonde, Ngaire Porter; and the sets, which provide satisfactory atmosphere, were designed by the director in association with Jan Prain and Raymond Boyce.

F.A.

J.