A PLAY FOR SOUTHLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 930, 7 June 1957, Page 11

A PLAY FOR SOUTHLAND

Sir-Mr Peter Harcourt considers that I have done a great disservice to the New Zealand theatre by placing The Montgomeries of Glenholme first in the Southland Centennial Playwriting Competition. He begins by asserting that I have said that all the entries were ofa very high standard. I do not know on what occasion he thinks he heard me say this. On the contrary, my unchanged opinion is that the majority of the entries were very poor, but the top six plays were of a good standard. He then proceeds to demolish The Montgomeries at some length, finding it utterly worthless, and spends his last two paragraphs in telling everybody that I do not know my job. Mr Harcourt does not inform us as to what his qualifications as a judge of plays may be. Mine is based on a solid 25 years professional work in the theatre as actor, producer, adjudicator and drama tutor; and on the judging, in England and elsewhere, of more one-act and full-length playwriting competitions than I can recall.

Mr Harcourt claims to be a "disinterested party," and ig concerned because among the entries were "some" authors whose reputations must suffer by being placed below The Montgomeries. He cannot believe that this was the best play. Weil, Mr Harcourt has not read all the entries and I have, and I can tell him that there were plays there that were certainly more pretentious, more pompous, mofe incomprehensible, than the winning one. J dare say he would have preferred some of these; in arly case, I feel sure, after reading his letter, that his top six would have been different'from mine. He does not ask me why I considered The Montgomeries the best entry, which would have been courteous and reasonable: he tudely asserts that it is downright bad. To save space and when the occasion demands I can be as blunt and uncompromising as Mr Harcourt. He speaks of "triteness and ineptitude" and "incredible banality," thereby showing that he has missed the whole point of the play. He says that its spiritual home is a woman’s magazine, thereby showing that his sense of style is non-exist-ent. He finds the excellent dialogue fit only for farce and caricature, thereby proclaiming his lack of period feeling. He complains that "the play is not even regional,’ seeming to think that it would be a point in its favour if it were. But the vaugeness as to the exact locality and the way in which the setting is not particularised further than "In the Colonies," gives the play a universality altogether lost on Mr Harcourt. Whether it is photographically accurate of any particular area or situation 70 years ago is, in any case, of small account beside the imaginative and dramatic truth which the play ssesses and to which Mr Harcourt is nsensible. The organisers of the’ competition, in their wisdom, did not rule that the plays submitted should be set down in any particular acre of soil. They

were to be by New Zealand authors, and many of them were not set in New Zealand at all. Tne Montgomeries of Glenholme is not a great play: it does not aspire to be. It does not attempt to scale the heights. It is a good play: even, perhaps, a very good play. The author wisely limits herself to what she knows and to what she feels confident of doing and what she attempts she fulfils admirably. The result is satisfying and workmanlike. It is a play I should feel proud and honoured to produce. On one point only do I agree with Mr Harcourt, and that is in hoping that the NZBS will present some of the plays entered for this competition so that we can all judge for ourselves and, in the case of The Montgomeries, so that a fine piece of writing can be appreciated by a wider audience. In any case, there seems little point in holding playwriting competitions if the various dramatic societies and the NZBS are not going to make use of the material they bring to light.

FRANK

NEWMAN

(Christchurch).