Elmwood Players

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32677, 5 August 1971, Page 14

Elmwood Players

“Robbie,” by John Mihell; produced by Stewart Robertson. “Chamber Music,” by Arthur Kopit; produced by Brian Deavoll. “Number Ten,” by Iris Thomas; produced by Hunter Bell. Elmwood Players, Fulton Avenue; August 4 to 7. Running time: 8 to 10.05. Arthur Kopit must be one of the most imaginative and versatile dramatists writing in English; his one-act plays in particular seem resourceful and energetic, exploring extraordinary situations with a fine sense of dramatic modulation. The characters in "Chamber’ Music” are asylum inmates who persistently cling to their private fantasies; repeatedly, this leads to divergent irrelevancies which are, at least superficially, quite hilarious. Gertrude Stein and Joan of Arc (sensitively played by Islay McLeod and Barbara Steele) exchange abuse in rhyming couplets, Pearl White (Beryl McLeod) trips round the stage and curtsies to the queen of Spain (Molly Watson), and Mozart’s wife, a role very well executed by Irene McDonald, serenades herself at the window to the accompaniment of some chamber music by her longdeparted lover. A strong element of rea-

lism is introduced by the asylum administrators (Ivan Finlayson and Jim Steele), and by one of the inmates (an aviatrix, played by Liz Davis) who insists that she is not insane, and repeatedly punctures the others’ schemes with quite reasonable objections only to get herself martyred; reality asserts itself in the face of all the extravagance, and the play appears to veer towards a demonstration of the disastrous conseqences of democratic extremes. The play is obviously going to work much better at Elmwood than it did at the festival; last night was an uneven performance, with several mishaps, but the cast did manage to exploit the comic subtleties with much more precision than they did last week.

The two New Zealand plays both seemed to be under the influence of the familiar situations of television comedy. Both appear to have had adjustments made to their beginning since the last performance, and this definitely results in improvement. Perhaps because the material is relatively familiar (at least compared with Kopit), the audience obviously derived a considerable amount of pleasure from both plays, the one a space extravaganza about a pregnant robot and the other a farce about Maori-pakeha relations.—H. D. McN,