Play about sanity

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 20

Play about sanity

“The Restoration of Arnold Middleton,” the David Storey play which will mark the restoration of John Kim as producer for the Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society, is described as a dramatic and sharp portrayal of character.

Mr Kim’s production will open in the Repertory Theatre on Friday, and will run until Saturday, July 3.

Mr Kim, a former resident producer for the society now teaching at Linwood High School, was one of the best known theatre producers in Christchurch in the early 19605, but for the last few years he has confined his activities to school productions.

He describes “The Restoration of Arnold Middleton" as "mixing comedy and

pathos with shrewd awareness to create a compelling, true-to-life drama.” Seemingly slight differences between Middleton and his wife are compounded to become critical enough to push Arnold to the point where his sanity hangs in the balance.

Arnold, a secondary schoolteacher, has come to

depend for his stability on being able to live in a fantasy world where he is the prototype masculine i hero. With Hanson, a fellow teacher clinging to lost youth, he throws himself into the annual school production with a verve and completeness which he is

unable to show in his relationship with his wife. His preferred collection of museum pieces has built up into an inanimate barrier between them. Impotent, in fear of women, but dependent upon them, he appears to have a closer tie with his mother-in-law than with his wife. He is flattered, but inactive, when a schoolgirl, Sheila, develops • a violent crush on him. Matters are brought to a head when his wife tries to break the barrier by a forcible removal of all that she sees as standing between them. When Hanson arrives not only with his latest would-be conquest but also with the adoring schoolgirl, an unexpected crisis develops. This at first appears to catapult Arnold into insanity where his fantasy may have full rein, but with his wife’s help it eventually enables him to face himself and recover enough self respect to return to “normal” life.

First presented at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh and then at London’s Royal Court, the play was selected for recent inclusion in the Penguin Series of English dramatists. "David Storey’s sharply etched characters inhabit a world which should be usual to us, but in a series of sequences not unlike a psychological mystery deeper layers to their personalities are revealed as the action sweeps on to a conclusion which hangs in the balance until the end,” Mr Kim said. Middleton is played by Robert Bell, his wife by Jan O’Connall, her mother by Daphne Milbum, Hanson by Richard Harvest, Miss Wilkinson by Dorothy Hart, and Sheila by Janet Wilson.