of the gutter; as he departed and the tension relaxed, she would grow tender. How freely Mary performed! With the audience within three feet of her she would run her hands through the hair of the man wanting to marry her with such a feeling of intimacy that they seemed to be alone on the moon. When she confessed the murder of her child to the priest, the audience hardly dared draw their breath, such was the sense of actuality her playing conveyed. I see her now, casually flipping her shoes off in a fatigued despair, fingering the skull of an ancient Maori chief, watching with cynical amusement, cradling the head of a suffering alcoholic, and crooning to him a cradle song of her mother's. “Acted with great sympathy,” said the Evening Post, Wellington. “I have rarely been so moved,” Dominion, and The New Zealand Listener called her “passionate and tortured.” There is certain to be a wider showing of this play, either as a feature film, or in a tour. So Hira Tauwhare and Mary Nimmo join the impressive number of Maori artists working in the theatre. As singers, actresses and entertainers, their fame is now world-wide, and only yesterday, I watched a young Maori boy dancing in a ballet troupe with all the masculine vigour for which his people are renowned. The Maori people have a great deal to give to the theatre of this country. Mary Nimmo as Norah Vane in “The Wide Open Cage.” (PHOTO GEORGE KOHLAP).

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