Gospel musical to end Repertory year

Press, 17 November 1981, Page 10

Gospel musical to end Repertory year

A trio of well-known ability is , staging the’Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society’s end-of-year musical, “Godspell” — Penny Giddens is director, Philip Norman musical director, and George Williams choreographer. “Godspell,” which is based on the parables of St Matthew, will open in the Repertory Theatre on Saturday. The music and lyrics are by Stepheri Schwartz and the script is by John-Michael Tebelak, who wrote it for his master’s degree at an American theological college. The songs include “Day by Day,” “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord,” “Save the People,” “Bless the Lord,” “All for the Best,” “Light of the World,” “Turn Back O Man,” “We Beseech Thee.”

A view of the Gospel in which Jesus is presented as a “funny man” Christ, with clown face, striped trousers and funny hat, is-central to the production’s theme of “bringing celebration back into religion.” ’ Kevin Potter portrays Jesus arid the cast of clowns

includes. Stephen Brinkhurst, Sarah Davison, Judith Gibara, Peter Hewson, Cathy Lulham, Nicholas Mcßryde, Leigh Mangin, Ken Neufeld, and Nicki Reece. The troupe appears on stage throughout, and each member plays a variety of roles to express parables and precepts in speech, songs, dances, mime, and comic action.

Philip Norman’s musical ensemble comprises: Victor Cattermole (drums), Nick Frost (drums), Richard Christie (guitar), and Geof Norman (bass guitar).

The season will run for two weeks. There will be a matinee on Sunday, November 29, but no evening performance on Monday, November 30. The production has the support of Radio Avon.

Collier retrospective

A Wanganui-born artist who studied and exhibited in 1 Britain between 1913 and 1921 but who virtualjy gave up painting after her return to New Zealand is the sub-

ject of a major touring retrospective exhibition which will open in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery this week.

She was Edith Collier, who was born in 1885 and died in 1964. The exhibition, which includes about 75 paintings, water-colours and drawings, was arranged by the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui. Edith Collier, the eldest in a family of 10 children, was educated in Wanganui, where she studied art at the Wanganui Technical School. At the age of 27, in 1912, she went to London to study at the St John’s Wood School of Art and at the London Central School. When she returned to Wanganui, where art circles were biased toward the traditional, her work was greeted with hostility or ridicule, and while she was away in Wellington several of her works — life studies and a nude — were destroyed by her father. After that she devoted much of her time to caring for members of her family and painted very little, producing

only a few landscapes and family portraits. Her fast known painting was a portrait of a nephew, done in 1942. She rarely exhibited; her works were shown with the New Zealand Academy in 1927 and with the Christchurch Group in 1929 and 1931, and she had an exhibition of 62 works in Wanganui and Hamilton in 1927-28, but those were to be her last until 1955, when the Sarjeant Gallery arranged an exhibition of 70 paintings, arranged in four categories to present work done in London, Ireland, Cornwall (where she did what have been described as her best and most progressive paintings), and New Zealand. Her work was also featured in a major exhibition in the Sarjeant Gallery in 1971, seven years after her death. ‘ Another exhibition which will be mounted in the McDougall Gallery this, week is an internal one, comprising a collection of satirical prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by such artists as Cruickshank, Rowlandson, and Hogarth. The prints, illustrating both social and political satire and including cartoons

also, have been drawn from the gallery’s own collection, and from the collections of the Canterbury Museum and the Canterbury. Public Library. Some have not previously been on display to the public. Most, of them were originally published as prints, but a few have been taken from periodicals, such as “Punch.”' A volume from the first year of publication of “Punch” will be on display, and there will be cartoons and drawings also by the leading politicial cartoonist in the early days of “Punch,” John Leech. The exhibition will be shown in the gallery’s print <TOom, and will remain open until the New Year.

Ballet season ■A new production of the New Zealand ballet, “The Snow Maiden,” composed by Edwin Carr for performances in London and choreographed by Russell Kerr, will be featured by the Southern Ballet in its Christmas season, which will open in the Southern Ballet Theatre on-November 24.

The programme will also include the second act of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” and “Kaleidoscope,” a work choreographed in classic style by Lorraine Peters to music by Glauzonov.

. Russell Kerr’s comic ballet, “Omage (?),” will complete the programme. The season will run until December 5. Friday performances will begin at 5.30 p.m., there will be matinee performances at 2 p.m. on Saturdays, and on other week nights performances will start at 7 p.m. These times have been chosen to emphasise that the programme is “a family show.” Members of the Early Music Society of Canterbury will give a special demonstration concert in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery on Sunday afternoon. It will not be a formal concert, but a programme of medieval and renaissance music, played on a variety of early instruments. The keyboard will be represented by a virginal, a type of harpsichord . very popular in England in the seventeenth century. , This will’be played by Peter Low, a founder of the society, who will also demonstrate his skill at the pipe and tabor. Other solos will be played on

the lute and the lyra viol, and there will also be some lute songs. A consort of viols will play five part music for two trebles, two tenors and bass, and Neville Forsythe will conduct some music on recorders and crumhorns. Two other groups will include such unusual instruments as the kortholt, the rackett and the cittern.

.The society, set up in 1977 to co-ordinate the activities of people interested in early music and early instruments, holds a meeting each month at which members may play or listen to medieval, renaissance or baroque music played on appropriate instruments. Sometimes there are guest speakers or performers. Other activities include week-end workshops in early music or dance, public concerts, and a newsletter.

The performance on Sunday afternoon will be presented free of charge as part of the McDougall Gallery’s outreach programme. It will be followed on December 6 by a folk-dance programme,

to be presented by the Farandol Folk Dancers. This “mini-season” of ancient music has been arranged by the gallery to support an exhibition, scheduled next month, featuring another early art — tapestry making. This will feature the tapestries made by contemporary weavers at West Dean House, Sussex, from drawings by Henry Moore. Home again Bruce Mason’s play, “Blood of the Lamb,” will return once again to the Court Studio theatre on November 24 after an Australian tour which had its ups and downs. The tour opened in Newcastle on September 29 and then moved to Sydney for a five-week season. An extension to Melbourne was proposed but could not be arranged despite prolonged negotiations. Two members of the cast, Judie Douglass and Tomascita Edgerton, have returned to New Zealand. The third.

Elizabeth Moody, remained in Australia to look for further work, but will return to begin rehearsals for the Studio season.

The play drew a mixed reaction from Australian audiences. It had been very popular in New Zealand, but Sydney theatre-goers found the script and the subject matter difficult.

The critics concentrated on the subject matter and the difficulties experienced with the academic elements of the script, but at the same time gave high praise to the acting and production standards.

Nevertheless, Court Theatre officials say that all those associated with the tour believe that the first s, concrete step has been taken ■ in developing a Tasman theatre exchange, that 5 “Blood of the Lamb” has been a valuable experience, and that they hope for fre-.. quent exchanges of staff and E reductions, to the mutual' enefit of- Australian 1 and ?? New Zealand' theatre.