A PLAY FOR SOUTHLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 928, 24 May 1957, Page 11

A PLAY FOR SOUTHLAND

Sir.-Your contributor B.E.G.M. has urged the NZBS to find and produce more New Zealand plays, and has suggested the 60-odd entries for the Southland Centennial Playwriting Competition as a likely source of material. I think we should be given an opportunity of hearing these plays and judging them for ourselves, especially in view of the decision to award first prize to a play called The Montgomeries of Gienholme. As a disinterested party I can only express my astonishment if no better play than this was submitted. The judge, Mr Frank Newman of Christchurch, has said that all the entries were of a very high standard. I would like to believe him, but he has given me no cause to do so by choosing a play of incredible banality to represent that standard. The Montgomeries tells a story of such triteness and ineptitude that even a woman’s magazine, which is_ its spiritual home, might hesitate to publish it. Its construction is poor, its plotting weak, its characterisation superficial and inconsistent. Even the Southland Times, in a kind notice, drew attention to the fact that two of its principals were "victims of faulty characterisation." The central figure, Mr Montgomerie is inarticulate to the point of absurdity. His dialogue is repetitious and phrased in that peculiar brand of "upper-clawss" English which exists only in farce and deliberate caricature. The other characters speak like conventional English ladies and gentlemen of fiction in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Occasionally, as a sop to authenticity, they refer vaguely and self-conciously to "sheep," "paddocks," "gullies," and "the city" (unspecified). The play is not even regional. I had supposed it took place in South Canterbury; the Southland Times hazarded a guess at the Wairarapa. The setting and period, we are told, is "The Colonies in the 1880's." There is little internal evidence to suggest that the action is passing in any particular colony of the British Empire in its heyday. As a New Zealand. play, which, it purports to be and which it had to be according to the rules of the competition, The MontSomeries fails to establish any sense of time, place, local colour or indigenous character. It concentrates instead on the familiar themes of domestic chatter, matrimonial chess, the mortgaged homestead and the "bounder" whose cash atones for his lack of class. I doubt whether any of the situations could be justified as distinctive of New Zealand, even 70 years ago. I cannot believe that this was the best play entered for the competition. Among the also-rans were some authors whose reputation must suffer jf their work has to stand uninformed comparison with The Montgomeries. The elevation of this play to a false position as typical of New Zealand drama would be unfortunate, to say the least, for our native theatre. ‘ : Could not the NZBS restore some of the damage by broadcasting a selection of plays from the competition and letting us make up our own mind about their relative merits? It seems to me that

New Zealanders (or those to whom this is a matter of some concern) should be given an opportunity of discussing what is, on the face of it, a highly debatable verdict.

PETER

HARCOURT

(Wellington).