New play from old

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34103, 16 March 1976, Page 18

New play from old

“The End of the Golden Weather,” written and performed by Bruce Mason. Repertory Theatre, March 15-16. Running time: 7.00-9.15.

Whether by instinct or by necessity, each performance of “The End of the Golden Weather” is a freshly creative experience for Bruce Mason, and the many who regularly attend his festival appearances testify to a work which fascinates not so much by its duplication as by its evolution. Last night, the words that we heard seemed little different, but in an equally important performance area, that of physical expressivity or body romantics, it might almost have been a new play. Fleshing out a character is something that any good actor can do. and something that an actor of Mason’s calibre can do superbly. But the process of physical expressivity whereby Mason single-handely on a bare!

i stage populates the seaside [township of Te Parenga in [the early thirties is somei thing that belongs to another .order of artistry altogether. Characters are built by the assumption of their voices, but when he changes voices they do not disappear, and what we have left is something much stronger than a mere memory of a vocal ghost: it is something physical, something dynamic, a segment of the stage that has been invested with a vitality( that stays to the last curtain. Mason through all this functions as a synthesising agent, a medium through which the various characters emerge and recede: there is the clergyman toying with “the stone called Peter.” the imbecile training for the Olympic Games (all of them), the policeman who achieves far more than the adolescent John Mulgan to subdue the Depression riots, and more than 30 other characters, [including a figure we may

i recognise as the young (Mason. And. though 'he • relationship we respond to I most intimately is unquestionably that between Mason (the performer and his assumed younger self. • nevertheless this relationship •is placed within a community. every member of which (is very close to us. Because Mason’s physical performance has become much fuller than when I saw .it last .and because his attitude towards his younger [self has become more impish, the second half of last night’s performance was both more intense in its atmosphere of community and also even funnier than when Christchurch saw it last. From the bookings, there is obviously no shortage of new audiences for his two Christchurch performances, but it will be those who see the work again after some years who will take away the richest satisfaction.

—Howard McNaughton