Hira Tauwhare as Aroha Mataira, Norman Florence as Johnny Mataira, Hermione Gregory as Queenie Mataira. Readers may be interested in the B.B.C. casting: Hermione Gregory has Indian blood, and Norman Florence is a South African of mixed Malayan and Spanish parentage. (B.B.C. PHOTOGRAPH). Kiwi flattening twang which overlaid the pure vowels of a person used to speaking Maori. Mary Nimmo came from Horowhenua, Hira Tauwhare from the South Island. They were cast as mother and daughter. Rehearsals soon began and one thing became quickly obvious. Whereas it took most of the cast some time to lose their self-consciousness and to assume their play personalities, both Hira and Mary were soon absorbed. They are what is called “natural actors”. Because they were “free” in their new characters, their movements were relaxed and expressive, their timing of actions was governed by the mood of the scene and they created an atmosphere of their own. There is a wedding scene under a marquee on a hot summer's day. Liquor flows, and tongues are loosened, and there is much ribald advice to the bridegroom. From early in rehearsal, Mary's performance as Queenie would differ considerably here from the spry ingenuousness of the opening scene. Her movements would grow languorous, her laughter less controlled, as she finds her senses opening with the stimulation of the pakeha wedding. Hira, as the mother, reacted in contrast: the more uncontrolled the revelry became, the greater her dignity. I can see her in performance now, her face wise with the traditions of generations, stilling the babble with her voice suddenly raised in the haunting cadences of a Maori chant. Rehearsals were not always easy. Sometimes the subject matter of the play was embarrassing to the cast. The subject after all, was the strain and tension that arise in the effort of adjustment from one way of thinking to another, in the differences of race and colour. Mary recognised the truth of the play within herself and sought to project that. “That doesn't feel right,” she would sometimes say, and author and producer would work to find out why, and a line would be rewritten. Hira had a different problem. For a number of years, she had lived as a pakeha fighting to suppress the Maori side of her inheritance. Now she had to learn the language, awaken in herself the pride of her birthright, handle a taiaha with assurance give the victory haka “Ka whawhai, ka whawhai” so that it stirred the audience, and finally, dressed like the chieftainess of a Goldie portrait, die in the faith of her ancestors. The tribulations of this voyage of self-discovery gave her eventual performance great depth. There was something else too, which was to me both moving and stimulating, yet hard to define. Was it that the mastery of an ancient Western form of culture allowed her to release to us, to express to us some of the greatness of the old Maori—the marriage of our two cultures in a new fruitfulness? Wellington and Auckland both greeted the play and the performances with a sense of excited discovery. The cast was delighted in the wedding scene where Aroha suddenly sings her song and the guests applaud, that the audience applauded too. As yet the rest of the country hasn't seen it, but the New Zealand Broadcasting Service is at present working on a radio version. On the other hand, an audience of millions in England saw the B.B.C. television production, in which Hira Tauwhare secured her old part against the powerful opposition of one of England's top actresses, Flora Robson. Here is the response of the critic of the London “Daily Herald”: “Those who watched the B.B.C. production of The Pohutukawa Tree” on television last night had an unforgettable experience. I mean the performance of the New Zealand actress Hira Tauwhare as an old Maori woman fighting to save her children from the ways of the white people. I have seen nothing on T.V. to match if for sheer, strange grandeur.” Mary Nimmo's great opportunity came with “The Wide Open Cage”, by James K. Baxter, which I produced for Unity Theatre, Wellington. Here was a part rich in character, ever-changing in mood. At one moment, Norah Vane, the Maori girl she played, would be insulting a Catholic priest who sought to redeem her, in the language