Hall - Middle Age Spread

I SPENT SOME MONTHS of 1976 in London and returned to Wellington to find I had missed Roger Halls comedy of the Public Service GlideTime. Fortunately for me, the public demanded a return season, and I still remember the impact of that performance in Wellingtons Opera House, sitting with an audience delighted to see themselves on the stage, recognising that Roger had hit them off to a T, and responding delightedly to every line. This was impressive. I had always admired Rogers flair and had attended many of his old student revues. What was that night doubly impressive was the now matured theatrical skill that lay behind the achievement of GlideTime. It was not just a very funny script about a group of very ordinary people in a government office. It was skilful stage-writing of a very high order. I might that evening have been in the West End. It was no surprise to hear that the author was to be awarded a writing fellowship by the University of Otago, where he quietly settled down to write a second play.

A year almost to the day after that performance of GlideTime, I saw his second play MiddleAgeSpread, put on in the tiny Wellington Circa Theatre, which had mounted the pioneer performance of the earlier success. Once again, a Wellington audience saw themselves on the stage and responded with delight. MiddleAgeSpread, when it transfers to a larger stage and a full-size theatre, bids fair to follow the popular success of GlideTime. Roger had done it again.

MiddleAgeSpread is, I suppose, a comedy. It is certainly very funny both in dialogue and situation. But if it is a comedy, it is a comedy with a serious undertone. Three middle-aged couples are entrapped in the suburban situation, bored with themselves, bored with their partners, bored with their daily routine of job or family or household chores. There are the moments of excitement, the moments of revelation, but in the end it will all end up much as it began. If you are looking for any moral, you will find it in the plays final line. When the party is over, there is nothing for it but to get stuck in and do the dishes. We cant escape being the kind of people we are. The original audience responded with rounds of laughter. But Roger is never laughing at his characters. They may tear into each other. Roger never tears into them. What emerges are six very ordinary people, portrayed with sensitivity and sympathy.

Suburbia has been done before. It has never been done in New Zealand with such a sheer sense of theatre. This publication of the original playscript will attract two kinds of readers. Most will read it, just as it lies on the printed page, for the incidents, the plot, the story-line, the people involved. They will, I know, be entertained by a story recounted with narrative skill. But any reader who has at any time had anything to do with the theatre will recognise that behind the plotting and the story-line is the hand of a writer who thinks all the time in terms of the spoken word and visual presentation on a stage. All six characters offer marvellous parts for the actors. Roger has a remarkable ear for dialogue, a remarkable ear too for stage silences. He sees as well as he hearsthe visual leit-motifs (like the raincoat and the railway-book) are beautifully contrived and exploited. Above all, the structure of the play, with its interlocking scenes and its ebb-and-flow movement, seems to me masterly. I keep thinking of Molire and Sheridan.

Roger Hall can comment wryly on our society. He can present his audiences with a mirror of themselves to delight and entertain. But his special skill shows when the printed page is translated into stage action and stage speech. As actors and directors can recognise, he writes all the time in pure terms of the theatre; and this is what makes him a playwright .

I AN A. G ORDON