Merely Players In A Revue

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32396, 8 September 1970, Page 9

Merely Players In A Revue

A Christchurch group which prepared a revue last year and took it on tour successfully to Nelson and Timaru is to go on the boards again this week. The new revue, entitled “Pieces of Cod,” and featuring the same brand of zany humour as its predecessor, is to open in the Ngaio Marsh Theatre, Ham, tonight for a season of six nights.

The sketches in the revue will cover such subjects as Maori concert parties, the Prime Minister, drunks in cinemas, Shakespeare, concert audiences, Japanese pottery, and the Battle of Omdurman, and the whole thing will be tied together with music performed by Andrew Sharp and Hugh Canard. Alan Grant, Stephen Erber and Christopher McVeigh have written the script, and will also perform it, assisted by Jim Wright and Mattie Wall. David Hindin is the producer, and David Palmer the stage manager. The group, which calls itself “Merely Players,” was formed in November of last year, and produced its first revue, “Rhododendron is a 12-letter Word,” for a onenight stand in the Ngaio Marsh Theatre before taking it on tour at Christmas to Nelson and later to Timaru, where its performance assisted in raising funds for a “little theatre.” The group’s aim, Mr Grant says, is to create a permanent revue ensemble which writes and performs its own material and thereby provides Christchurch with a small portion of the whimsy and satire distressingly absent both here and elsewhere in New Zealand.