Another Peter Nichols play

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33381, 13 November 1973, Page 14

Another Peter Nichols play

A Peter Nichols play, “Forget-Me-Not Lane,” will be the last entertainment for the year at the Court Theatre. The production will open on December 4. Peter Nichols is one of the most popular contemporary British playwrights, and two of his plays—“A Day in the Death of Joe Egg”, and “National Health”—have been presented for very successful seasons in Christchurch. “National Health” has also ’been shown in a cinema version. “Forget-Me-Not Lane” is an autobiographical play which describes the difficulties Mr Nichols experienced in breaking away from a particularly shy adolescence during the war years. The play also deals with tensions in the family, and the way that family patterns recur from generation to generation. Mr Nichols also invites his audience for, “a saunter down memory lane.” He recreates the "feel” of the war period, with Hitter and Churchill its oratorical kings and Vera Lynn its uncrowned queen. The play is described as less a “look back in anger” than a look back in nostalgia. The play is to be directed by Mervyn Thompson, who has done very little else at the Court so far this year, his only other contribution having been a revival of his own “O Temperance ” which played to full houses both in Christchurch and in Wellington. Mr Thompson will be very busy from now on. The present production will be succeeded by presentations of Bruce Mason’s “Awatea” (during the Commonwealth Games, with a cast including Pat Evison and several leading Maori actors), and “First Return” (Mr Thompson’s own play, to be performed in March). In addition Mr Thompson has chosen the plays, planned the proand cast the

Court’s New Zealand play season early next year. “Forget-Me-Not Lane,” according to Mr Thompson, is “a light-hearted play with a nice Christmas feel about it, yet it contains plenty of meat as well.” He adds: “More important from my point of view is the fact that it engages its audience at first hand, drawing them in to the action in a very relaxed way. It is not, thank heavens, a draw-ing-room play but a warm direct entertainment which recognises the existence of an audience—and invites that audience in. “It’s also very theatrical, not something that can be tdone on television. In general I don’t think that the theatre should interest itself too much in plays that work better in other media.” The leading part will be played by Wayne Bell, and others in the cast include Isabel Wilkin, Selwyn Hamblett, Judy Cleine, Valerie Langford, and Nicholas Blake. Newcomers include Helen McGowan and Philip Holder.