Middle Age Spread
By Roger Hall
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Roger Hall
Roger Hall, a free-lance writer, editor, and novelist, lives in Delaware.
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Book preview
Middle Age Spread - Roger Hall
MIDDLE AGE SPREAD
A play completed during the writer’s tenure of the Robert Burns Fellowship in the University of Otago
MIDDLE AGE SPREAD
Roger Hall
Victoria University Press
Contents
Title Page
Foreword
First performance
Author’s note
Characters
The play
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Scene Eight
Scene Nine
Scene Ten
By the Same Author
Copyright
Foreword
I SPENT SOME MONTHS
of 1976 in London and returned to Wellington to find I had missed Roger Hall’s comedy of the Public Service Glide Time. Fortunately for me, the public demanded a return season, and I still remember the impact of that performance in Wellington’s 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 Roger’s 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 Glide Time. 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 Glide Time, I saw his second play Middle Age Spread, 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. Middle Age Spread, when it transfers to a larger stage and a full-size theatre, bids fair to follow the popular success of Glide Time. Roger had done it again.
Middle Age Spread 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 play’s final line. When the party is over, there is nothing for it but to get stuck in and do the dishes. We can’t 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 hears—the 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 Molière 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
First performance
MIDDLE-AGE SPREAD
was first presented by Circa Theatre, Wellington, on 16 November 1977 with the following cast:
ELIZABETH
Dorothy McKegg
COLIN
Grant Tilly
ISOBEL
Jane Waddell
REG
Ray Henwood
JUDY
Donna Akersten
ROBERT
John Reid
Directed by Michael Haigh
Designed by Grant Tilly
Lighting by Rex Gilfillan
Stage Manager/Production Assistant Lee Bruce
Slide Montage John Reid
Author’s note
Because the Circa stage was too small to have the bedroom scene set up all the time, a revolve was used. However, with all the changes needed and with all the actors having to take on and off plates, glasses etc., inevitably there were still quite long pauses during each scene change. To cover these, Michael Haigh showed a sequence of slides together with appropriate music. This device worked brilliantly and added another dimension to the play.
The line about the Labour Party and sleeping sickness, which gets one of the biggest laughs in the play, was originally devised by Dave Smith whom I thank for permission for its use.
Characters
COLIN
. Mid to late forties. Nice, well-meaning man with enough intelligence to know his limitations. He has spent all his life in teaching, and has now had enough, but realises there’s no way out. He is beginning to put on weight and is