FIVE ONE-ACT PLAYS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21865, 19 August 1936, Page 6

FIVE ONE-ACT PLAYS

ANNUAL drama league FESTIVAL CAPABLE AMATEUR WORK Five one-act plays filled the programme of the .first evening of the annual drama festival of the Christ* church and North Canterbury area of the British Drama League at the Radiant Hall last evening. The plays are best taken as an indication of the efforts of the league to stimulate enthusiasm for dramatic work, rather than as an attempt to present a programme to be judged by the ordinary standards of appreciation of a city audience. None the less, certain of the pieces were capable and worthwhile expressions of the playwright’s intention, and as such (for the material was good), worth judging in a rather different scale. The best came last, being the Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society's production of “Black Night” by John Bourse—a play set, as it is stated, in ths living room of a Russian railway worker near the Polish frontier in 1917. The play was to a large extent made by Miss Peggy Maffey, the producer, as Olga, the railway worker’s daughter whom Bolshevist sympathies place eventually at tragic variance with her family. Miss Maffey brought confidence, vitality, feeling and considerable intelligence to the playing of a difficult part. Miss Frona King was quite successful as the dispossessed Russian countess. “The House with the Twisty Windows,” not an easy piece, produced by St. John’s Dramatic Club. Leeston, was notable for the acting of Mr Francis W. Page, who showed perhaps a more complete command of his part than any other player of the evening. This play was produced by Dr. W. G. Volckman. It was noticeable that those societies which chose the more substantial plays were the more suecessful. The choice was at least a recognition that the play was the thing.

“Memoirs,” a play of interesting though simple construction, was produced for the Murray Group, by Mis? Lucy Cowan. In it Miss Betty Hunter, with a Scandinavian mannerism which has been heard somewhere before, gave some dignity to a part wnioh might, even in reality, have been only an exhibition of pettiness. “The Understudy," presented by St. John’s Drama Club, produced by Mr Eric L. Cordery, was the lightest piece of all, and was quite lightly played. Mr Hugh Hunter, as the producer of an amateur dramatic society, amusingly sorted out a tangle of jealousies in a prospective cast. The Catholic Drama Society presented “The Lovely Miracle," which came to a pleasant end with a few notes of “L’Apres Midi d’un Faune" behind the scenes. A few comments were addressed to the players by the judge, Miss Ngaio Marsh, after the performance.