This, did not, however, dampen the ardour of Dunedin audiences. The season lasted six nights, finishing two days before Christmas. The reviews were good, the house sizes and returns reasonable, and in due course The Chookery powder-keg went off. Fish and chips and beer were the party staples for a group of students who arrived back in Christchurch fatigued and slightly hungover. Ngaio was relieved to get home. Crawsie, her housekeeper, had been left with the responsibility of looking after her father who was getting increasingly cantankerous as his health deteriorated. ‘He could be a tyrant and very difficult at times.’
The New Year brought yet another separation. The journey to Auckland involved a ferry journey and a long train trip. As Ngaio sat with her company of young actors, memories of her own tour with Allan Wilkie jogged back. When she travelled by train she repeopled the carriage with those ‘long-remembered companions’. ‘It was the first of many such occasions and I was to grow familiar with the look of my fellow-players in transit,’ she wrote in Black Beech, ‘the ones who read, the ones who stared out of the window, the ones who slept, the cheerful, the morose and the resigned.’ But this time Ngaio was the actor-director in charge.
In Auckland, the travelling troupe was welcomed by a mayoral reception. In her address, Ngaio took the opportunity to promote the need for a better infrastructure of performance venues throughout the country to foster the development of actors, playwrights and a national theatre. She unapologetically used the public platforms that her drama activities and celebrity status gave her to uphold the value of theatre and argue for more state investment in its promotion.
The theatre they were forced to use in Auckland was a case in point. In the January heat, the tiny auditorium became an oven. Opening doors and windows simply changed the oven to fan-bake and, worst of all, let in the thundering noise of trams and an electrical generator that rumbled away to supply power to the stage. The stage props and furnishings were sent by sea. ‘When the coffin made its way from the wharf perched on top of a lorry, hats were reverently doffed.’ Sets and scenery were assembled in the heat. At night there was some relief, but the matinées were a sauna. In spite of the conditions, they played to packed houses. ‘For fully five minutes after the final curtain the hall rang with continuous applause in appreciation of a production of outstanding merit,’ wrote the reviewer for the Herald.
Accusations of ranting vanished. ‘Miss Marsh is to be congratulated,’ said the Auckland Star critic, ‘on the way in which she had trained her cast to take Shakespeare’s declamatory speeches in their stride, giving oratory the full power of their voices, but dropping to ordinary conversational rhythm for the more casual lines.’ Once again, Ngaio’s directing received accolades:
for the handling and grouping of her cast and the smoothness of the production. Her talent for unusual effect, together with the skill of Marsh Williams, who designed the scenery, produced striking settings by the aid of drapes, cyclorama and pillars. Lighting was given varied play; and the period costumes were attractive.
The two-week Auckland season was a box-office success, grossing £1,115 and making ‘an enormous contribution to the expenses of the tour’. To keep costs down, most of the cast were billeted, but the management and stars, like Desdemona, stayed in hotels. ‘They thought they were doing well by me,’ recalls Barbara Webb. ‘I was put in the Railway Hotel…[and each night] one of those young men used to walk me home…[but] a creepy man used to go up in the lift with me every night and I had to run to my bedroom…I would have rather been billeted.’
Any individual anxieties were soon overshadowed by the collective disaster of a rail strike. They expected to open in Wellington on 24 January 1945, but there was no way of getting there. At the last minute, the strike was averted and the cast were retrieved urgently from Mission Bay beach and herded onto the train. Their props and scenery were delayed in Auckland until the beginning of the next week, so they arrived empty-handed. Ngaio, Dan O’Connor and tour manager, Colin Allan, were frantic. Amazingly, the Wellington season opened with sets and costumes borrowed from local repertory societies and hotels. The stress took its toll on everyone. By this stage an estimated 12,000 New Zealanders had seen the plays, but none of them like this. In Auckland, they gave 17 performances; in Wellington, it was six.
A storm of controversy broke out over critic Harcus Plimmer’s Hamlet review in The Dominion. His snide comments that modern dress was no novelty as ‘it was done in like manner in Berlin 30 years ago’ could be overlooked, but his attack on Jack Henderson caused outrage.
It was difficult for instance to be deeply impressed with a melancholy Prince who, from time to time lit a cigarette, and on one occasion puffed smoke into the face of his father’s murderer…Mr J. Henderson, a small man with uncertain legs, who has the gift of velocity of high vibrancy.
It was the remark about the young actor’s legs that was the trigger, because Jack Henderson had been crippled by polio. One of his legs was significantly shorter than the other and he walked with a pronounced limp. When he was tired on stage he staggered under the exertion of the part, but he had done such a good job that critics had failed to pick, or were too polite to mention, this flaw in his performance.
People flew to his defence. ‘Even to the most unobservant, it is apparent that Mr. Henderson is handicapped by a physical disability. He is to be congratulated rather than jeered at’ stated one of many letters to The Dominion’s editor. The battle between opposing forces got so heated that Ngaio finally stepped in with her own letter to the editor.
Sir—Some of your correspondents suggested that we resent your critic’s review. On the contrary we welcome it as salutary. None of the players has taken part in this correspondence; all feel that if New Zealand can get angry about a Shakespearian production there is still hope for the theatre in this country. As for Jack Henderson’s lameness, it is easy to believe that your critic failed to notice it.
Ngaio raised the tone of what had become an acrimonious debate. She graciously accepted criticism of her directing and modified her practice, and knowing that she might eventually receive criticism for having a lame leading man, she had gone ahead regardless. She was a director who learned from her mistakes and took risks, and this was the admirable standard she set for her players. The controversy brought crowds flooding in. It was the best piece of free publicity the actors had received all tour. They played again to packed houses, and at the end of their season were given a public reception at the Alexander Turnbull Library.
On their return to Christchurch in early February 1945 the players received another civic welcome, and played a final season in the Radiant Hall. Allen Curnow revisited Hamlet in a review that summed up its director’s achievement.
Miss Ngaio Marsh’s Hamlet does make the magic work. It is living Shakespeare: it is able to release those feelings of pity, wonder, and horror, which in our times of screen-fed theatre-going we are liable to forget…It works; it is alive to every part; the 17 scenes bear the action forward with faultlessly managed continuity…Miss Marsh’s company must soon largely disband…But the greatest loss and the saddest waste are of something intangible—the spirit in this company, the imagination and devotion.
The tour made a ‘national icon of Ngaio Marsh. In New Zealanders’ minds, she became synonymous with Shakespeare and the theatre. Her popular approach broadened its audience. She made Shakespeare appealing and proved that, in spite of difficult conditions and a small-scale economy, a tour was not only possible, but could be deemed a success. An estimated 20,000 people saw Ngaio’s Hamlet and Othello. London’s West End theatres had a huge audience in their backyard; Ngaio’s troupe had to carry Shakespeare around the country to capture theirs. The great 18th-century actor, David Garrick, wrote in his prologue to The Clandestine Marriage, in 1766:
But he, who struts his hour upon the stage;
Can scarce extend his fame for half an age;
Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save,
The art, a
nd artist, share one common grave.
The imagination and devotion that Ngaio collected together in this band of players on this extraordinary tour would dissipate and only the shadow of memories would remain. But she had established a style of production and a stable of talent that could live again in new incarnations, and she had highlighted the need for what Curnow referred to as a national theatre enterprise’ in New Zealand.
In the meantime, there was a gap. Perhaps as a consoling gesture, Canta published the shows’ comic out-takes. Even the anxious moments and the accidents now seemed fun.
For who in the cast will forget the complete collapse of Desdemona’s bed in the final scene of Othello, when the grief-stricken Moor throws the gentle lady down on the bed, and how she disappeared from view, folded between the two halves…like meat in a sandwich?…Or when Horatio missed his entrance…[or] Cassio…had such ‘poor and unhappy drain for drinking’. What shall be said of the dagger that flew into the front stalls…the footlight broken by a foil, and the foil broken by the duel.
It was widely known that Jack Henderson planned to leave almost immediately for London to begin training at The Old Vic, so the cast assembled for one last occasion and Dan O’Connor kindly sponsored a charity matinée performance, which raised £100. The cheque was presented to Henderson with the best wishes of the cast. Then, a massive shockwave rocked the foundations of conservative Christchurch society: Jack Henderson was not leaving alone, but with Dan O’Connor’s wife, Trixie.
This confounded Ngaio. He was her actor, but O’Connor was a close friend and a cornerstone of her productions. Ngaio’s allegiance was split, but she was quite clear about the ethics of the scandal. O’Connor had been betrayed and so had she, and she never quite trusted Henderson again. The affair cast a pall over winding-up arrangements. The charity cheque was returned, and Henderson and Trixie O’Connor made a very public elopement. Trixie was younger than O’Connor and older than Henderson. The plan was that she would help him promote his acting career in England, but Henderson never acted again: his final moments in the castle of Elsinore were his last on stage. One of the great sadnesses for Ngaio was that Dan O’Connor had embraced the idea of a national theatre, and now, surely, his allegiance to the concept would be compromised.
She returned home to her routine. Maybe the future would be brighter now the end of the war seemed inevitable. Reviews of Died in the Wool had begun appearing in British newspapers as the tour was drawing to an end. On the whole they were positive, but she took to heart the Time and Tide comment that it was time for Alleyn to go home. The setting for the next novel would be British.
Ngaio kept alive her passion for the theatre in the wake of the tour by spending hours in animated conversation with Dundas Walker. He resumed his Sunday visits and they talked about the latest overseas shows, directors and actors. Dundas had toured with Ngaio and the student players, and was a constant companion at rehearsals and during productions. ‘He was a very nice gentleman,’ remembers Barbara Webb. ‘He was tall and very skinny with dyed black hair.’ Walker, who was homosexual, had a close and supportive, but platonic, relationship with Ngaio.
They mulled over what the next student production should be, and in the end Ngaio recommended Shakespeare’s. A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the drama society. A comedy would contrast with the two previous tragedies and reflect New Zealand’s ascendant mood now that victory in the war seemed close. (Germany surrendered in May.) The production was conceived on an epic scale, from the tiny elves co-opted from a local ballet school, to the fantastic fairy court of King Oberon and Queen Titania. Wind, rain and fiercely cold temperatures battered rehearsals at the Little Theatre, while snow lay on the ground for the show’s opening night at the Radiant Hall in July 1945.
Henderson was overseas and Molineaux was following the demands of a legal career, but not having strong male leads was a strategy. The dominance of men in Hamlet and Othello had been noted and challenged by members of the drama society A Midsummer Night’s Dream was more even in its weighting of male and female roles. This choice would give young women a chance to hone their acting skills in a way that the tragedies had not. Without the star quality of Henderson and Molineaux, however, the topography of talent and acting in A Midsummer Night’s Dream was much flatter. The infant elves sometimes came close to stealing the show, and what did dominate was the raucous acting of the rude mechanics, especially Hugh Ross as Nick Bottom, Mervyn Glue as Francis Flute, and Jim Erikson as Robin Starveling, who were described by the Star-Sun as ‘gems of pure comedy’. Douglas Lilburn’s music, ‘specially composed’ for the show, was commended for contributing much to the ‘mood of the comedy’.
The point was made, in a collection of reviews published in Canta magazine, that the costuming was evocative of the sinister rather than the magical side of fantasy. A Tolkienesque quality to the wardrobe and make-up made them positively frightening. This was a dream with nightmarish elements that offered a fascinating insight into the dark side of Ngaio’s imagination. As a child, she had been captivated by grotesque fairytales and the black-humoured Victorian limericks of authors such as R.H. Barham. It was only natural, when she brought this vision to the stage, that it would contain more than a little of the macabre. According to John Pollard, writing in Canta as ‘Friar Balsam’, the characters had:
Great green eyebrows, greenish clothes and faces, and a hairdressing making coiffures resemble dingy dish clouts, all combined to produce beings that looked more like mossy corpses than airy sprites, while Oberon, with his ghastly face and sinister pokings, pointings, and rolling of eye-balls, was reminiscent of ‘Frankenstein’ filmed in Gruesome Technicolor.
This chilling interpretation of Shakespeare’s comedy was undoubtedly the result of Ngaio’s direction, and in some respects it came close, in spirit at least, to the Elizabethan mind that conceived it. If Ngaio’s ghoulish visualization of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a mismatch in Christchurch, in 1945, it would certainly not have been out of place in Shakespeare’s time. Fifty years later, Peter Jackson would bring similar imaginative elements to the screen in Heavenly Creatures and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was not toured, and nor was Ngaio’s production of Henry V which was staged in December of the same year. After his marriage break-up, Dan O’Connor had gone overseas, so the encouragement and financial impetus of a leading impresario was missing. The casts were huge, and to justify a tour of this size the productions had to demonstrate a precocious talent and flair that they never realized. Rehearsals for Henry V began after end-of-year examinations and the season lasted three nights. The houses were full, partly because Allen Curnow’s Press review encouraged people to see the production. In spite of the short rehearsal period, and ‘heavy cuts’, he felt Ngaio had ‘caught the spirit of the play’. His negative criticism was an old albatross. ‘As before, in the Drama Society’s Shakespeare, one could have wished for more to be said and less to be sung or ranted.’ The play was staged in the Little Theatre, and this would be Ngaio’s last production there. Henry V’s huge heraldic scenes looked bizarre in the tiny space, and the power for lighting was supplied by a single socket, which blew during performances. Each night the battle on stage was matched by a battle behind the scenes to ensure the power board was not overloaded. At one point, when the fuse blew, Max McGlashan had to jam his screwdriver into it to complete the circuit. The Little Theatre was becoming too cramped to accommodate Ngaio’s dream.
In 1946, Ngaio staged Macbeth. This was the play, along with Hamlet, that she mentioned so often in her novels, and the Scottish Highland setting excited feelings of family history Macbeth, was also supposed to be unlucky, and she loved the idea that the play was jinxed. ‘The Scottish play’ also satisfied the continuing call for strong female leads. Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most dynamic and complex women. The lynchpin in her husband’s downfall, she is torn apart by warring motives and emotions. It is this psychological and spirit
ual journey from normality to madness, and from grace to damnation, that must be portrayed convincingly on stage. The challenge for Ngaio was to find a young female actor of sufficient calibre to carry the role. When the tall, contralto-voiced Maryrose Miller marched into the auditions, Ngaio could not believe her good luck. Miller’s deep voice gave her acting a range of intensity that suggested someone much older. The show opened in July. People flooded in to watch Norman Ettlinger, a returned serviceman, and his wife, a second-year student, destroy themselves on stage. Ngaio had advertised for ex-soldiers to audition. This was a new source of acting potential, as were the refugees and immigrants who came to Christchurch to escape the catastrophic consequences of the war.
Macbeth played for seven nights. Douglas Lilburn’s haunting Highland pipes set the scene, and Ngaio’s now-established formula perfectly captured the bleakness of the heath. Things were distilled and dramatic. In Canta magazine reviews, there were gripes about ranting and an overall sense that the actors had not quite fulfilled their roles. For the play to be successful, sympathy for the thane and his wife has to survive a convincing portrayal of their slide into madness and moral degradation. This is a fine balance even experienced actors struggle to achieve. The production was also criticized for its cheap costuming and stingy props. The most unconvincing were the toy swords and Macbeth’s papier-mâhé head on a broomstick, which, according to one critic, ‘deserved the hearty laugh it received’.
Student reviewers were always among Ngaio’s harshest critics. They reserved the right to offer an independent view, which was often jaundiced and bubbling with bravado. They were the radical voice and Ngaio represented the establishment, but sometimes they got it right. Lukewarm criticism was not matched by the popular response. The show played to capacity crowds and was a huge financial success. Dan O’Connor was back in the country, so the decision was made to tour Macbeth over the summer break. Ngaio made changes to the cast, costumes, shields, swords, backcloth—and papier-mâhé head—in preparation for their seasons in Auckland and Wellington.
Ngaio Marsh Her Life in Crime Page 19