New Repertory Play

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 12

New Repertory Play

The Australian actor and producer, Walter Pym, chose Emlyn Williams’s “The Corn Is Green” as his first Christchurch production for three reasons. The first was nostalgic: he was a member of the cast of the first professional production of the play in Australia, in 1946. The second was that it was a play he “just happened to like,” and the third that he found a “wonderful cast” among Christchurch actors. Mr Pym’s production for

the Canterbury Repertory Society will open in the Repertory Theatre on Saturday and will run to September 14.

The play is about Miss Moffat, an English schoolmarm who, left "a bit of money” and a house in Wales by her uncle, decides to put her inheritance to some use by starting a school for the illiterate Welsh mine boys. One pupil—Morgan Evans—has great talent and intelligence, and she concentrates on coaching him for a scholarship to Oxford. But there are complications when Morgan is seduced by Bessie

Watty, daughter of Miss Moffat’s housekeeper. “Although the play was written a long time ago—the first production was before the war—it is still a very strong play, perhaps the best Williams has written,” Mr Pym said yesterday. “It has to some extent an autobiographical background, in that Miss Moffat is based on Williams’s own schoolteacher at the Holywell County School, and that he did win a scholarship to Oxford.” Miss Moffat in the Repertory production will be played by Mildred Woods, making her first appearance for Repertory for eight years. Others in the cast include Doreen Corrick, Craig Ashley, Frederick Betts, and Vincent Orange. The set—a Welsh cottage—has been designed by John Hendry. Mr Pym, who will celebrate his thirty-eighth anniversary in broadcasting today, is one of the most experienced producers Repertory has had.

In Australia he has appeared in, or produced, comedies, musical comedies, and dramas, acted and produced on television, and produced “thousands” of episodes of radio serials. He has been in New Zealand for two years and a half as a radio producer for the N.Z.B.C. and has produced'three plays for the Downstage Theatre in Wellington. Although this is his

first stage play in Christchurch, and he has no firm ideas yet about future productions, he is sure it will not be his last. MAJOR BARBARA

Helen Browning has been chosen by the Elmwood Players for the title role in their forthcoming production of Shaw's “Major Barbara.” It will be the group’s first major production of a Shaw play since the war although act II of “Major Barbara” has been produced with success in several one-act festivals.

John Smythe will play Undershaft, Bill Hayward Cusins, and Margaret Collins Lady Britomart, and others in the cast include: Ross Prebble, Francis Porterfield, John Bateman, Jillian Dean, Joan Peel, Frances Pattinson, Pat Burke, Jack Baird and Barry Williams.

The photograph shows Frederick Betts as the Squire and Doreen Corrick as Miss Ronberry in “The Corn Is Green.”