ANTI-THEATRE PLAY FINE THEATRE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 18

ANTI-THEATRE PLAY FINE THEATRE

“There are moments when I wonder if I am simply playing with words,” confesses the father in Boris Vian’s “The Empire Builders”, and the audience in the Museum Lecture Theatre last evening may at times have wondered the same thing about Vian himself. What, if anything, is the play “about” ? Reality ? The bomb ? Youth and age ? Life and death? Algeria and the French ? The noise which drives the terror-stricken family from floor to floor in the apartment building, the grisly figure of the schmurz —are these (oops) symbols? One of the chief merits of Mervyn Thompson’s imaginative production of the University of Canterbury Drama Society’s orientation play is that it leaves each member of the audience to form his own opinion: to grope his way through a maze of parodic dialogue in search of a possibly monstrous meaning; and the search may well end in a confrontation with himself. Nor does Vian, the inventor of the elastic wheel, make this quest any easier. In true pataphysical fashion, he scatters the text with clues which may lead only to “imaginary solutions”.

While Mr Thompson has preserved the ambiguity of

the play and perhaps ambiguity is its actual “meaning”, he has invested the somewhat rudimentary characters with sufficient humanity to make their predicament invite compassion. The production is, in fact, illustrative of how a daunting script can gain through creative interpretation.

The obvious creative addition, in the literal sense, is the brief film which serves as prologue to the play, an inspiration that one feels sure Vian, as an experimentalist and a cinema director, would have applauded. Startlingly good both in its inventive camerawork and skilful editing, Murray Reece’s film brilliantly set the scene, mood and pace. If the play itself did not always maintain the pace—it lagged, for instance, during the long dialogue between the daughter and the maid—this fault should right itself, as should the actors’ slight uneasiness with the set.

Barry Empson and Jan Farr, as the gruesome, genteel father and mother, gave excellent sustained performances; most of the play’s humeur noire is in their lines, and intonation was almost invariably just right, timing exact. Mr Empson met the enormous demands of the last act, during which be is the only speaker, magnificently.

Of the supporting cast, Robin Gray was an admirably macabre neighbour, and Elizabeth Wily, as Mug, acted with plenty of vigour although her “maid’s” accent was a little insecure. Irene Logie brought out the wit and pathos in the daughter’s lines and succeeded in appearing the only character capable of facing up to reality, Schmurzes, and similar phenomena: as such, her costume seemed unduly bizarre. As for the Schmurz, capably played by Jeremy Astley, it looked and behaved just like any other. Properties were well chosen, and the black cardboard shapes and lighting effects provided extra links between film and play. Music which ranged from Novello to Brahms to electronics, was used deftly to underscore Vian’s mordant ironies. Christchurch patrons, even if they are outraged or perplexed by it, should find this anti-theatre play, paradoxically, first-rate theatre.