FOUR PLAYS PRESENTED

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30499, 22 July 1964, Page 18

FOUR PLAYS PRESENTED

Drama League

Festival The plots of the four plays in the British Drama League's 1964 Festival of Drama, which opened last night in the Repertory Theatre, were all based on the idea of good prospects turning sour: unfortunately the performances tended to reflect this theme, and the evening produced nothing but indifferent entertainment. The best performances came in an embarrassinglycontrived play about a women’s drama group rehearsing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”—“Poor Mr Shakespeare” indeed. The W.E.A. Dramatic Society has several young actresses with interesting voices and a sense of theatre (Robyn Dell, Paddy Brown, Jennifer Mundin, and Ann Simpson), and the char-cum-heroine (Sylvia Lowe) was good enough to invest her part in genuine pathos—no slight achievement

The most ambitious production was the Christchurch Religious Drama Society's “Little Joe Peck,” an episodic morality about a little man corrupted by an immoral society. Lack of imagination in movement, costume, and staging, added to difficulty with lighting cues (no doubt attributable to festival conditions), marred some intelligent and sensitive acting. Keith Cooke, Peggy Burton, Gordon Viner, and Lynda Leigh were consistently credj ible. “The Shadow in the Glen” [(lrish National Society Drama Group) succeeded in creating atmosphere, but did Jso at the expense of both comic and dramatic possibilities. Marianne Shaughnessy: I conveyed her frustration and vitality, both significant in, relation to her old husband.: especially when he let her 'think he was dead. J o hn Mortimer’s sad ■ comedy of time wasted. I “Lunch Hour” (Elmwood ; Players), was insensitively (played by two lunch-hour ! lovers who spoke words, rather than acted them.' Audrea Beddie's character study of a hotel manageress was conventional but appropriate. The festival which was! opened by Mr H. J. Walker, , M.P„ will continue until Sat-1 urday. The judge is a well-i known Auckland producer, Edna E. Harris. —P.R.S. J