It's Funny

Bruce Mason seems to have a fanatical concern for the correct staging of his plays—he always produces first performances — and the maintenance of his image as New Zealand's leading playwright.

Birds in the Wilderness, which won a prize in the 1968 Auckland Arts Festival, was presented at Downstage last week with "loving core" (to use his cliche).

The play is funny—there's no doubt of that. His programme notes are equally as amusing. He records all his past achievements many of which are impressive.

But some reveal a type of pathos he strived for but didn't achieve in the third act (notably of an unpublished collection of essays and mention of a verbal debate to which he was challenged by the late Sir Donald Wolfitt —he accepted "the knight declined").

I would argue thai Mr. Mason's concern is unwarranted —many people are prepared to accept him in the light he desires. If the audience on the night I saw the play is a reasonable judge then Mr. Mason is a popular playwright and Birds a popular play that will no doubt have a successful Downstage season.

The play has a number of flaws especially in the third act—but it amuses consistently. It involves Bernie (Don Farr) and wife Juliet (Dorothy McKegg), a kiwi couple who are mortgaged to the eyeballs and expecting a sprog.

Bernie has been reliving the war every Friday night since 1947 with his mates (it is now 1957) and his wife is tired of it.

He promises to give it all up only to be thwarted by the arrival of a jewish cockney comrade-in-arms Jacko (Grant Tilly). His wife is mortified but agrees to put Jacko up for a while.

Bernie, in order to help pay off the enormous house he has brought, has advertised for lodgers. An elderly Hungarian couple arrive followed by an aging ex-wrestler from Canada—Big Maxie and his mute mistress from Te Kuiti Rube (Carole Eliott).