"THE POHUTUKAWA TREE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 11

"THE POHUTUKAWA TREE"

Sir,-Your correspondents R.M.R. and P.C. may be correct in their assessment of present-day race relations, but they have not understood Bruce Mason’s play. Aroha Mataira, the old Maori woman, has been subjected to too meny European influences to be a Maori of "the old kind." She is a romantic, dreaming of a heroic grandfather and of a storybook past, and it is this romantic conception of the, past that prevents her from coming to terms with modern life. At the same time she is perfectly aware of European values (witness the wedding scene): In trying to hold on to both cultures she fails and her mind collapses. She then abandons the European standards that she no longer believes she can maintain and surrenders herself to her tribal memories, She lets herself die as a Maori, consciously severing her previous ties with the pakeha, both social and religious. All this may be bad anthropology. Perhaps the Maori is not faced with the problem of adjusting himself to a European way of life and of living with Europeans while his head is still full of a quite different culture and of a past that is being officially preserved for him. Perhaps the two cultures still exist today in watertight compartments and the real problem is how many beers a Maori can be allowed, not how to deal with a divided mind. Perhaps. But what is a playwright expected to do? To write a play that is a major contribution to our theatre, as this one is, or to construct nice problems in dialogue form for anthropologists to purr over?

JOHN

DUNMORE

(Wellington).

Sir,-The very fact that "The Pohutukawa Tree" is so controversial proves its excellence. My husband and I were privileged to see this play and found it most enjoyable. We considered it the best New Zealand play to date, and a very good production. I have lived among Maoris and studied Polynesian anthropology, and also taught at a Maori school.. I consider that Bruce Mason made a true presentation of the Maori mind and emotions as well as their nobility and spirituality. To say that the leading characters preferred starvation and death to’ re-

signation to European wrongs is ridiculous. Illegitimate childbirth and vandalism are universal and not only European, as P.C. asserts.

J.

W.

(Wellington).