‘Spotlight’ series off to good start

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33588, 17 July 1974, Page 4

‘Spotlight’ series off to good start

Some people get all the luck, according to the title of Roger Hall’s play which opened the “Spotlight” series on Monday night; and there is a chance that the television viewers themselves will be coming in for some of this in the weeks ahead.

This opening “Spotlight” production can be greeted as a good New Zealand play. By the yardstick of entertainment Mr Hall succeeded.

His play offered action, drew on suspense, presented plenty of native idiom, provided a double twist for the ending, and served up two acid women. It did not confuse the viewer with introspection or disturb him with issues. Roger Oakley had the best part and the best characterisation, and made the most of it. Davis Weatherley was suitably ominous as the former snooker champion who looked likely to beat the audience favourite; and lan Mune was sufficiently brooding in his minor part. ' Lee Grant, and Margaret Blay froze each other stiff. The story line may have required snappish women, but it is not possible to believe that New Zealand could have one of the highest natural population increases in the world if these two were meant to represent typical local females. It will be a relief, however, if a New Zealand television play comes to be screened without the appearance of at least one member of either the police force, the probation department, or the prison service. Tn this production it was the turn of the prison service. Perhaps this was to make viewers feel at home. The first scene-setting became uncannily like a sequence in “The Rover’s Return,” saved, however, by an absence of those quackquack north-country voices. Then it was into the back room for snooker and overtones of “The Hustler.” Perhaps everything has been

idone before, and perhaps ! derivative art is inevitable; never mind, it came over well.

The timing of the little earthquake, together with its result, were quite unbelievable and yet so much in tune with the wild improbabilities of the West Coast that they were completely credible.

This was a production much to be welcomed even though it clung rather too readily to New Zealand stereotypes. As "Spotlight” progresses viewers should, judging from the technical strengths of the first offering, be in for worth-while Mondays. «k * #

The new Army, as represented by Woodside camp, South Australia, has some remarkably unpleasant sides to it these days, “Nationwide” showed. One of the activities offered at this place is a course in what is gently called “code of conduct.” This euphemism turned out to describe thuggery and psychological torture.

Apparently the potential enemies in the East regard extremely rough interrogation measures as normal behaviour; it has been decided that the soldiers of the West must train for this. Woodside gives the training. It is to be hoped that the Australian major who was finally shpwn writhing in

mental agony on a bed in a cell while suffering blinding lights shone in his face and being assailed by the shriek of electronic noises and the roar of revolutionary songs was putting on a good act. If, however, he was as distressed as he looked then the necessity for a course of this severity ■is a serious matter indeed. One of the officers running the course was asked whether the acts of beating and other miseries inflicted on those taking the course would tend to brutalise the staff, and he said that he did not fear this result. Heinrich Himmler, who many said was a gentle man, also used to express concern of this kind about his young S.S. men who looked after the Jews in the concentration camps. S? * * “The South Tonight” had an interesting survey of the declining fortunes of the township of Rakaia. This is the sort of subject which, with many photographs from the past, is especially suited for television. No real solution for the problem could be found among the inhabitants beyond suggestions which amounted to setting up another Rolleston. — D. M.