Bond production successful

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32560, 20 March 1971, Page 18

Bond production successful

“Narrow Road to the Deep North." By Edward Bond. Directed by BiU Stalker. University of Canterbury Drama Society. Ngaio Marsh Theatre. March 19 to 28. Running time: 8.00 to 9.45. For some years, the ’ Canterbury stage has been dominated by an elite of reputable and experienced producers who usually manage to attract a good cast; last night their ranks yielded to accept a relatively new producer, who offered a courageous and remarkably well-conceived presentation of a difficult script. This is perhaps the first successful production of a Bond play in New Zealand, and Bill Stalker’s achievement is the more to be respected when one remembers that the catalogue of failures includes an attempt by Rodney Kennedy. Admittedly, Stalker has an impressive cast to work with—but details of structure and numerous unscripted bits of business were applied with such discreet and sensitive economy that they suggested a sense of proportion and cohesion rare in a young director. NOTORIETY IN U.K. Bond’s work has, of course, achieved a certain notoriety in Britain, where most of it has at some time been banned; this play is relatively mild in its iconoclasm, compared with “Saved” or “Early Morning,” but, even conceding this, it will generally appeal mostly to the broadminded and hard-thinking. The producer’s programme note defensively suggests that Bond may have “no clear convictions,” but this play has much more thematic continuity than his other works, and does make a serious attempt to deal with contemporary problems. After all, it was commissioned by a cultural organisation.

The stronger members of the cast (that is, all the main roles and quite a few of the minor ones) excel in the freedom for lateral development that Bond allows them; the first entry of Bernard Kearns and Judie Douglass on a white colonial bicycle established a relationship that intensified continually, contrasting violently with James Wright’s Shogo, garbed and voiced like a Draculoid Mikado. John Reid handled a formidably difficult role with uncanny precision, and carried the delicate finale perfectly. As the central character, the poet Basho, Jeremy Stephens established a powerful presence at the start and held it throughout; Paul Sonne gave the Prime Minister rather more austerity than might have been expected, but this brought out character contrasts that helped regulate the over-all balance. MINOR FAULTS Most of the minor faults should rectify themsleves in the season, and the taped electronic collages which developed the right aura of conflict and bewilderment at the start could be used for continuity in several other places. The prisoners were a near failure in their inexplicably abridged appearance, and the peasants at the start were given a more prominent role than they could manage. But these details were more than compensated by other high points: the throne with two hands continuously groping out of its back, the Shogo’s dismembered body hammered to a placard with colossal nails, the delicacy with which Judie Douglass makes ratstails (white, of course) and the vibrance with which she says “Hallelujah” and “sewer.” Senecan drama demands grotesque realism, and this the production has in lavish heaps. —H. D. McN.