Blue Ladder’s ‘Veve’

Press, 27 September 1985, Page 4

Blue Ladder’s ‘Veve’

“Veve,” by Kathleen Gallagher, presented by Blue Ladder Theatre Group at the Blue Ladder Theatre, Cashel Street, 8.30 p.m., September 26. Directed by Trish Purcell and Kathleen Gallagher. Running time: One hour. Reviewed by Stephen Quinn.

Often there is a big difference between the workshopping of a play and the final, polished product.

Workshopping is almost a form of practice, a way to knock a play into shape by smoothing off the rough edges. What we had last evening was an amalgam of the two methods — a form of whittle while you work, as the cast attempted to entertain and practise at the same time. Whether this is a legitimate form of entertainment, or indeed a legitimate form of practice, is a matter for personal taste. To me it failed because it did not know where it was going. This is not meant as condemnation of the acting or the writing style. Both

have potential. It is just that the whole evening wandered aimlessly without any apparent destination. The audience was not told when the play had started; suddenly it was off and running without any announcement or change to the lighting or music. Similarly, the interval presumably began when the actors wandered into the audience for a drink.

The plot, at least, is quite simple. Two Maoris, father and daughter, live in an old house. They are haunted by the ghost and memories of their wife and mother.

The script by Kathleen Gallagher, a Christchurch writer, is sparse. It has echoes of Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, where the silences and what is left unsaid mean as much as the actual dialogue. Much use is made of repetition and speech rhythms. A picture is build up of a family with little education. The daughter fights to remember her tribal origins, and in a sense is forced to reconstruct

them. Is this a comment on the plight of the Maori is modern New Zealand society? The play is short — a mere 35 minutes — but it holds a lot. During the interval a five-person group attempted to entertain.

It was a dismal effort. The five musicians seemed to be giving five separate performances. The result was a confused cacophony of jangled chords and mangled lyrics. The music was toneless and delivered in pseudo-American staccato style — in short it was typical of much of the gibberish that passes for entertainment among many New Zealand bands.

The one thing they had going for them was enthusiasm. In fact, the evening bad a freshness about it that almost compensated for the obvious lack of preparation. In the case of the play, that lack of preparation was rather sad. When it moves out of the workshop stage, and the playwright knows what she wants to say, the play may well be worth seeing.