ONE-ACT PLAYS AND OTHERS

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21904, 3 October 1936, Page 17

ONE-ACT PLAYS AND OTHERS

MATERIAL FOR

AMATEURS

Bleak- Dawn. By Sydney Tomholt. Angus and Robertson. 224 pp. (6/aet.) Clay, and other New Zealand one-act • plays. National Magazines Ltd. 134 pp. At the Fountain, and other plays. By Ernest Selley, Williams and Norgate. 68 pp. (3s 6d net.) Wayfarers. By M. CreaghrHenryGeorge Allen and Unwin Ltd. 32 pp. (Is neL) Exiles. James Joyce. Jonathan . Cape. 154 pp. (3s 6d net.)

One of the chief signs of the vitality of the mpdern amateur drama movement is the popularity of what is really a new form’ 1 of literary activity in English—the writing of one-act plays. Not only in England, but in Australia New Zealand collections of short plays are published at regular inr tervals, prompted by the success of some at least of them on the amateur stage. That most of them have been performed before publication- is a guarantee that they have been at least partly licked into dramatic shape, and differences in this quality are not very great between one play and another, or between English and Australian collections. Wide differences do appear, however, in the quality of observation shown in the different plays. , , In the present group of plays, some of greater length than one act, Mr Sydney Tomholt’s, in “Bleak Dawn,” make most claim to record vital reality. That is their claim, but sometimes the reality they record is melodramatic rather than vital. The longer play from which the volume is named is the most important, and it succeeds in presenting very clearly the doubts and self-recriminations of a woman who finds that phe still loves the husband fx-om whom she has obtained a divorce because of his brutality. His Mrs Stanford is a woman who can be seen and felt in the reading, and recognised as a true portrait. The endeavour to create the atmosphere cf an average Australian worker’s home succeeds unexpectedly, and only Stanford, in spite of his blustering, is shadowy. The other plays in the volume are equally well built, with perhaps more emphasis on their crises but there is a feeling of unreality about them—even about “Anoli, the blind,” which has been highly praised.

The five New Zealand one-act plays in “Clay” are very different in kind from Mr Tomholt’s. Only “The Strike Breaker,” by Mr James Wilson, and “Prelude,” by Mrs V. Targuse, are as well made as his, and some of the others are marred by labouring amateur touches. The title play, “Clay,” by Eric Bradwell, depends for a large part of its effect on the funning commentary spoken by a chorus, but the value of the device js doubtful, for the substance that the play tries to present—a' woman artist’s unfaithful-’ ness in war time and her husband’s subsequent realisation of their son’s resemblance to a statue of her lover —is thin enough. “The Strike Breaker” is slow-moving, but successful in presenting a man faced with the*need to betray his convictions, and “Prelude” is an amusing trifle, presenting' a by-way of history with admirable singleness of effect.

“At the Fountain” presents Englishmen of the village dart-throwing kind in a situation that is reminisT cent of a story by W. W. Jacobs. “Service Above Self” and “The Heirloom.” the other two plays in the volume, are entertainingly written round plots that have little to do with life as it is actually lived, but they are undoubtedly good theatre. The technical competence of these three plays could be used as an example by New Zealand playwrights. “Wayfarers” is a rather longer play about the way a supreme work of art can achieve a religious effect and wipe out the bitterness in a man. If the people can be believed in the play is fair enough. James Joyce’s “Exiles,” first published in 1918, hardly belongs with this group, but it is not an important play. It deals skilfully and understandingly with some of the more refined forms of treachery, and in iti; love for philosophical argument at least it is thoroughly Irish and perhaps typical of Joyce’s mind. In the main it is intellectual rather than dramatic and: whoever expects to find in it the strength and exuberance of “Dubliners” and “Ulysses” will be disappointed. It offers rewards to the reader who likes to observe the play of tenuous emotions, but it is not surprising that its only public performance was unsuccessful.