PRIESTLEY PLATITUDES
At the beginning of J. B. Priestley’s World Theatre play, The Golden Entry, it was stated that problems of casting had prevented its stage performance. After hearing it, I can think of several other reasons for its non-per-formance. Unlike many of Priestley’s plays whose theatrical force has made. him a respected modern dramatist, The Golden Entry is a dreadfully static affair, lacking cumulative power and with an ending that almost sounds like a gesture of despair. The bankrupt Harkfast, trying to keep open an art gallery he runs mainly for altruistic reasons, converses with several ‘types, most of whom, when they can get in a word edgeways through his voluble philosophising, want to utter Priestley platitudes about Life and Art and all that. All the Priestley straw-men were belaboured furiously-gutter-journalism, aesthetic hangers-on, willowy young men ("Go and look at the Town Hall. It’s fabulously horrible")--bureaucracy, the soullessness of committees and so forth. But, presented speechwise and lacking dramatic realisation, it all sounded suspiciously like claptrap. Only Frank Pettingall’s eccentric old Yorkshireman enlivened this disappointing piece for me.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570222.2.21.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 915, 22 February 1957, Page 10
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179PRIESTLEY PLATITUDES New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 915, 22 February 1957, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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