Drama

Rejoyce O ye faithful

Sue Freeman

Unity Theatre's presentation of Stephen D was adapted by Hugh Leonard from James Joyce's novels, Stephen Hero and The Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man.

In the first act, when Jeffrey Rowe as Stephen Dedalus repeated, "I will not serve", I was strongly tempted to say at this point "He didn't!" but this was not continually so. At times his actions were exaggerated, but overall he gave a creditable performance for a group of Unity's size.

Nathaniel Beatus and Christine Chronis as Stephen's parents lacked verve. The Irish accent was carried better by Charles Krinkel as John Casey and Janice Fraser's convincing playing of the dogmatic but intelligent Aunt Dante.

Bernard Grice, as the preaching priest, had powerful material but it was not well used. The delivery was only fair and in the sermon the part dealing with the dearth of communion with God, surely the aspect of Hell which would pose most dread to the spiritually sensitive Dedalus, was omitted, but this was no fault of Bernard Grice.

Stephen's student friends, Chris Hector as Cranly, John Leggott as Temple, and Kenneth Laraman as McCann, appeared earlier playing three schoolfellows; thus a producer's economy added an interesting continuity to the play. They and the President of the University (Trevor King) drew appreciative chuckles from the audience with their portrayal of struggles's familiar to us all. Particularly pungent was the President's non-acceptance of Stephen's radical views.

The women were dressed in period costume by Agnes Rouse and the men's garb was relevant to their characters. With striking effect the two circles of Trevor King's lighting separated Stephen from the others. From the beginning Stephen was the centre of the play. The producers, Judith Dale and Pat Lowe, did not lay a heavy touch and the minor actors were unobtrusive; indeed, no one seemed quite sure why Emma (Penelope Skvrme) was there. With Geoffrey Wells as stage manager the few props were effectively used.

This play was produced on television with the better facilities, but Unity has shown that it can deal with such concepts impressively on the stage.