New director for Mercury recalls past visit to N.Z.

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 17

New director for Mercury recalls past visit to N.Z.

By

JOHN ROSS,

in London

Fresh out of drama school in 1952, a budding actor, lan Mullins, fully expected to spend his first few months with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company in sweeping the stage or making cups of tea.

Instead, he found himself embarking on a tenweek tour of New Zealand, followed by six months in Australia, in the company of Anthony Quayle, Keith Michell, Barbara Jefford, Leo McKern, Zena Walker, and John Nettleton, to name just a few’.

It was one good reason why he applied for the job of director of Auckland’s Mercury Theatre, in succession to Tony Richardson. He takes up his new post in April. The company’s threew’eek season at His Majesty’s Theatre in Auckland w’ent well, he recalls. And he liked what he saw of the people, the coast, and the countryside. He remembers visiting a cinema in Karangahape Road — “You don’t forget a name like Karangahape in a hurry” — and seeing an anti-tvar film entitled “The Red Badge of Courage.”

“When Tony Richardson told me the Mercury was just off Karangahape Road it dawned on me that the cinema we visited was probably the Mercury before it became a theatre,” he says.

Memories of the company’s exploits in Wellington and Dunedin are hazy, but Christchurch provided two highlights. “I remember we spent a day on a farm in the Canterbury Plains. We had lunch on the farm, and there were sheep everywhere. One of our party said, ‘I expect we will have Canterbury lamb for lunch,’ and the farmer said something like: ‘Good heavens — you don’t eat that stuff, do you? We never touch it — it’s disgusting.' ” That afternoon, Mullins recalls, he decided to go for a walk in the plains, and the farmer’s wife suggested to his astonishment that he should go by car. “I explained I wanted to

W’alk, but she told her son to follow me in the car ‘for when I got tired.’ So there 1 was, walking tnrough the Canterbury Plains, followed by a beautiful Ford, in case I collapsed from the exertion of it. I couldn’t believe it.”

New Zealand, he says, was then “rather comfortably and enviably behind the times,” and he W’as impressed with Auckland’s sun, its bays, harbours, and headlands. It was similar, in many respects, to Cornwall, where the Mullins family traditionally go for their summer holidays. “I expect things have changed a lot in the last 24 years,” he says, “but we are all looking forward enthusiastically to New Zealand.”

He remained with the Shakespeare company for a year, did some freelance repertory work, and then, in 1955, joined the Salisbury Arts Theatre. During his four-year spell there Mullins became interested in play directing, and in 1961 he was appointed director of the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham. Although he was primarily theatre director, he also directed plays, and did a fair bit of acting. “You name it, I played it,” he says. “Among other things, I w’as a detecitve, a solicitor, a businessman, an insurance agent, a gentleman, and a peasant.”

It was hard work and varied, “but incredibly good experience.” Mullins left the Everyman Theatre in 1968 to go free-lancing again, and in 1970 w’as appointed director of the Little Castle Theatre at Farnham, 40 miles from London. He spent the next few years not only running the existing theatre, but also planning a new theatre to replace it. And in May, 1974, he became founder director of the-•36o-seat Redgrave Theatre in Farnham.

“It’s difficult to say why I applied for the Mercury job,” he says. “But, having directed two

theatres in England for the last seven years, I didn’t want to do the same sort of work in Britain again, I feel the Mercury will be a challenge, and that it will be a theatre in a different environment, with different demands.” The decision to go to New Zealand has been a family affair. Mrs Helen Mullins, better known as Helen Doward, is an actress, and is currently appearing in the popular television series “Cross-

roads.” The couple’s two sons, James, aged 16, and Charles, aged 13, are at a critical stage in their school careers, and the family lives in an attractive timber, colonial-style house, in a beautiful pineforest setting. All four, however, are keen to go to New Zealand, and Mullins hopes his wife may find work at the Mercury. He has known Tony Richardson for many years, and sees his new role as an extension of Richardson’s pioneering w’ork in France Street, with no sudden changes looming. “By and large,” Mullins says, “it all comes down

to the artistic standard, the potential of the building itself, and the work the Mercury generates in Auckland. Hopefully, it will become a centre not only of theatrical, but also of social activity. The excitement which the work of the theatre generates in Auckland is very important. and it must also contribute to the world of education.” The most encouraging feature of the theatre in Britain in recent years, he says, is the development of regional theatre, and

the increasing support it is receiving. The rising costs of West End theatres have put them in a precarious position. It is important, says Mullins, that theatres like the Mercury should not exclude anyone because of the level of charges. That means that subsidies are essential, depending on the size and the scope of the work done in the theatre. “And I think it is importmant that a theatre like the Mercury should be as ambitious as it dares in its selection of plays. We must be adventurous and experimental in our choices, although, of course, the books must

balance at the end of the year.” Mullins says that he is essentially a romantic and a traditionalist in his work. “But I hope that is not misconstrued as meaning old-fashioned,, because 1 don’t think 1 am. “I think the theatre of today has gained a great deal over the years, but it has lost some of its magic and romance. Some of the spectacle and colour and imagery conjured up by words has gone. The threatre has lost a certain spirit of excitement — and that is something I always try to inject into the work I do.”