Black Beech and Honeydew (28 page)

The seating accommodation was, lawfully, two hundred but we were known to cram in two hundred and fifty. As will be shown later this, potentially, was a dangerous practice.

With all its terrifying limitations, the Little Theatre had great character and an authentic atmosphere. As the rehearsal period went by I grew to curse and love it on equal impulses.

The Hamlet came to stay with us on the hills. He and James (who played the Ghost) and I would return exhausted after an intensive rehearsal, devour eggs and bacon in the kitchen at midnight and, talking in whispers so as not to disturb my father, would hammer out the problems of the moment. It was a glowing hazardous time.

Of all the plays in the Shakespearean canon, it seems to me, there is most conspicuously in
Hamlet,
an element that, not so much contradicts as it stands apart from, theory, research, comment and derogation. This is the singular flavour of Hamlet himself. It has been argued, and with much reason and any amount of textual support, that the Prince of Denmark is fat and flabby, amoral, a supreme egoist, cruel, rude, treacherous, subtle, and an idiotic bungler. He may be all of these things but it is difficult to imagine a performance by
an actor who concentrated solely upon one or more of these aspects. If Charles Laughton who was fat, flabby, ugly and a superb actor, had elected to play Hamlet entirely in terms of the reverse side of the character, what would have happened? A fascinating speculation! Would his audiences not have come away exclaiming: ‘But awful as he was you couldn’t help liking him’? No actor as good as Laughton could have uttered certain lines without releasing the Hamlet magic. That the playwright himself saw Hamlet as an adorable prince is, to me at least, indisputable. Shakespeare knew, as so many of his commentators do not, that one is attracted to people, not by their virtues, but by that unfairest of all qualities – charm.

Our young Hamlet, in spite of the physical difficulty of his lameness, had the right ingredients: edge, rancour, intelligence, a quivering sensitivity and a certain wry sweetness. At first he was all over the place: unable to make his voice speak his thoughts, going full blast and arriving nowhere but presently the thing itself began to happen and here was an actor.

Two pieces of great good fortune befell us. The music for the production was written by Douglas Lilburn, then a young composer coming into full flower. Players were rehearsed. The violinist, Maurice Clare, at that time in New Zealand, heard Lilburn’s music and with wonderful generosity offered to lead the group. So we had sounds that sent our hearts into our mouths, sounds that before the clock struck twelve and the curtain rose on Elsinore, spoke of the cold small hour and an unquiet spirit.

Suddenly, the dress rehearsals were upon us. Strangely enough, I remember little in detail about them except that the first one threw us all into despair. The pace, attack and vitality which had seemed to be established, faltered and wavered. There were longueurs. There were deflations. I blasted away like a furnace and then said all the things about ‘bad dress, good opening’. We had two more and then, with the atmosphere almost giving off sparks like a cat’s fur, we opened to a full house.

It must be remembered that for twenty years there had been no professional Shakespeare in this place.

Let me describe one performance. Three youths unable to get seats have climbed up into the rafters and straddled a beam. Someone is sitting on the top of the electrician’s box in the auditorium.
The theatre is inside the university and upstairs. The Christchurch fire board has not yet concerned itself with our activities but we have had a complaint from the police about queues outside the booking office. The play has begun and I watch from the prompt corner. Opposite me, caught in reflected light from the acting area, a young man stands with his arms resting on the edge of the stage. When the players come close to him he draws back his hands but otherwise is immovable. I suppose he has effected an entrance by some unlawful means and has no seat. His face is extraordinarily intent and alive. Watching him, I think that the spirit of Bankside has come to life in New Zealand. So rapt, might have stood some young gentleman from the Inns of Court or a journeyman apprentice with arms akimbo on the apron stage of the Globe. It gives me great delight to watch this young man in the still, packed little house.

Theatre people are generally disposed to refrain from understatement when recounting a success and this is very natural in so hazardous an occupation. Surprise and relief as much as vainglory release our tongues when we succeed and surprise was our first reaction to the reception of
Hamlet.
I was much taken aback when, on the day after we opened, a tailor ran out of his shop and wrung my hand. ‘The whole town’s talking about it,’ he said, and indeed, it soon appeared that he did not greatly exaggerate. Well then: ‘let me speak proudly’ of these student-players.

This was the beginning of an association that has lasted for twenty years. For me it has been a love affair.

Hamlet
was twice revived and the following year we embarked on
Othello.
Somehow I contrived in the intervening months to write another book and take my turn at driving the hospital bus.

A strong nucleus from
Hamlet
was still at the university when we cast
Othello
and these players were now technically much better equipped. The ex-Laertes gave a sensitively realized performance as the Moor while Hamlet moved confidently into Iago. Under intensive and strictly disciplined rehearsal the company began to take up an attitude nearer to that of the professional than the amateur theatre. We had an extremely tough, capable, and rather arrogant stage-crew, most of them science or engineering students, who would try anything once and usually bring it off by a system of
ferocious argument, terrifying rudeness and immense resource and expertise. I had the greatest confidence in them. We kept our respective tempers rather better than might have been expected and in the ripeness of time developed a mutual respect and affection.

Othello
met with the same kind of reception as
Hamlet.
It became clear that, even if we extended our season for a longer period than the college authorities would stomach, we would still be unable to meet the box-office demands.

It was at this junction that a member of our executive who is now an administrator in the South Pacific, was seized with the notion of a tour in the long vacation. To this end he secured an interview in Auckland with Mr D. D. O’Connor, the
régisseur
who afterwards brought Stratford-upon-Avon and the Old Vic out to Australasia.

There followed a hectic period of suspense and then an offer from Mr O’Connor. He had been making enquiries and was prepared to tour
Hamlet
and
Othello
through the main cities during the long vacation. He would like, however, to see a rehearsal and would fly down if one could be arranged.

The Little Theatre was in use for examinations so we hired a room in town and set up our rostra in it.

It was a hot summer night when Mr O’Connor arrived. My great monsters sat on benches round the room in their shirt sleeves, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Elsinore rebuilt itself in a bare room under naked office lamps.

So it came about that after twenty years I was on the road again in New Zealand: this time with my own company.

New Zealand has a great many Edwardian and Victorian theatres, some in decent repair and others shedding dead paint like dandruff from old cloths that stealthily disintegrated in the flies. For this tour we played for the most part in the concert chambers of town halls. They could scarcely be less helpful to theatrical endeavour. In Auckland, in sub-tropic conditions, we had to keep the windows shut because of the noise of tramcars in the street. They were opened in the single interval and heavy, tepid air from outside dawdled into the steambath generated by a packed and sweating audience.

From the day the company began to work under full professional conditions, rehearsing in the mornings and with these rehearsals
their sole concern, the temper and quality of the productions hardened and at the same time gained in flexibility, teamwork and control. In Auckland the actors had reached their full stature and were playing very freely and with great delight. One performance of
Hamlet
I remember vividly.

We did not take a formal curtain call. The actors, in single file, crossed the stage silhouetted against a blue cyclorama and that was all. On this night, as always, the house lights went up as soon as the curtain fell on this procession. The applause went on and on. The players, most of them, had gone to their dressing-rooms but the young Hamlet who had given that night the best performance of the tour, sat on the steps of the rostrum and cried like a schoolboy. This, no doubt, was a release, a kind of unwinding.

The applause continued.

‘What’s the matter with them?’ said the stage director. ‘Haven’t they got homes?’ At last it petered out. Hamlet sheepishly got up, grinned and said he couldn’t think why he was such a bloody fool. Somebody gave him a grease towel and he began to remove his make-up.

‘All right. Clear,’ said the stage director. He looked through the curtain to make sure the house had emptied and drew back quickly. At the same time the applause started again, rose like a hailstorm and persisted. They were still sitting out there, almost the whole lot of them. In the end we had to reset the lights and parade as many of the company as were presentable. I have not known this happen on any other occasion in the theatre.

This tour was followed by a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in midwinter when for part of the rehearsal period the fairies tripped winsomely in unheated premises with one of our extremely rare falls of down-country snow lying thick outside. Then
Henry V.
Then
Macbeth,
first in Christchurch in a larger theatre and later again on tour, under Mr O’Connor’s banner. Precarious though its structure was and will always be, the student society had now established itself as a dramatic force in New Zealand.

In the last year of his life when my father grew more dependent upon me, I did not direct a play for the society but held a short production course of one-night-a-week exercises. From these and out of the accumulated experience of three years, a group of student
directors emerged. They did some excellent work. One of them, John Pocock, now a distinguished historian, directed a most beautiful and moving production of
The Axe,
a play by the New Zealand poet, Allen Curnow. A student director who had not been concerned in my production, tackled
Venice Preserved
and made an excellent job of it. Later, he worked for the BBC.
Dr Faustus
was produced and
The Way of the World.
A group of three tackled an act apiece of Sartre’s
The Flies.
There was a short season of one-acters. The standard throughout was lively and intelligent. The Little Theatre in those days was a quick forge and working house of thought.

These developments delighted me. I saw our group of young directors going forward under its own steam, with the Little Theatre becoming at once a training centre and a house for experimental plays. New approaches would be made by actors of integrity. Perhaps, I thought, it will be from here, who knows, that a professional theatre will at last emerge in New Zealand or, if not that, amateur actors who, being fully aware of the problems, stresses and technical demands of the stage, are prepared to play dangerously.

It was not long after my father’s death that Mr O’Connor brought the Old Vic to New Zealand with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. I have recorded already the impact of
Richard III
and the honourable destination of Kean’s coat. The student-players were, of course, much excited by this visit. They carried spears, they ushered, and as I and my fellow art students had done (long ago, now) they waited in queues, some of them all night, to get tickets. About three weeks before the company arrived we received a staggering request. Would we entertain them in the Little Theatre to a supper after the play and would we show them something of our work?

Putting, as far as one could, all thoughts of Bully Bottom and his tedious brief chronicle right out of mind, and refusing to cast Sir Laurence for the role of Theseus, I set feverishly to work. There was a certain new and most promising glitter in our minuscule firmament, a female one this time, Brigid Lenihan, who as an exercise in my production course, had worked with Bernard Kearns, one of our best men-players, on the first act of my obsession:
Six Characters in Search of an Author.
We plumped for this, built up as strong a cast as we could raise at short notice and rehearsed as if the devil was after us.

In the event, the performance was rough but not too bad and encouraging noises were made by our distinguished guests. This golden night in the Little Theatre was followed by a golden offer from Mr O’Connor. How would we like a tour of three Australian cities in January? Two plays would be called for. What about reviving
Othello
and completing
Characters?

It is tedious to elaborate success stories. I shall take no more than a glance or two at our Australian venture. Here we all are on the trans-Tasman steamer, much excited, greatly possessed of that sense of partnership inseparable from all well-augured enterprise in the theatre. We have runs-through for lines on the boat deck, we relearn about each other as travelling companions, we tingle with anticipation but maintain a cool and hardy demeanour.

With rehearsals called at 10.30 every morning over the past six weeks, the company has become fully integrated, has developed, I think I may say, a responsible, dedicated and mature attitude to the work in hand. We are all very conscious of this and try not to look astonished when movie cameras move in on us as we land at Sydney and there are press conferences.

The Australian press is, with several most honourable exceptions, opportunist, pseudo-American, curiously naïve and fairly impertinent. ‘Now, the great big smile’ they chant, aiming their cameras. Their picture pages champ with so many great big smiles, willingly or reluctantly induced, that one recalls with an involuntary shudder, the interior of some dental mechanic’s cabinet.