Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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war, TB The opening play this year was the Spaidal-directed The King's English, which did surprisingly start on time. The setting for the play is the yard of the home of a language-conscious Irishman, Ripley O'Rannigan, who is the king of the western shores ofthe tropical island of Karra Wanga. Kawa Loo, the refined cannibal king of the east shores, has just captured ten survivors of a shipwreck - all stereotypes. One of the survivors is to take the lovely Loola as bride while the other nine are to form an essential part of a native feast. O'Rannigan decides that proficiency at English will be the main criterion for selecting his future son-in-law. The play was loaded with hackneyed jokes and local colour - often at the expense of the English department- which no doubt helped it to win the audience vote, but it lacked the maturity, cohesion, and technical excellence necessary for serious consideration by the adjudicators. There was no exceptional acting in the play, but some of the prisoners, most notably David Fisher as Mike Hargraft look-alike, Silas Q. Pudkins, were very amusing. Bethune house presented Curse You, Jack Dalton, a hero and villain story with a humourous touch to it. The play contained all the expected cliches: a love between an eligible young gentleman and a housemaid which social pressure makes impossible, a fraud of a young woman also seeking the hero's hand, the maid really being of good background but having been robbed by a villain, and the villain, in disguise, seducing yet another woman, the hero's homely sisterg and it somewhat resembled a cross between a Dickens novel and a soap opera. The characterization was the play's strong point, with Tedeschini playing a very clean-cut hero well, Stephenson twho also directedl playing the snoddish mother, Slaughter playing what must surely be the homeliest-looking girl in the history of theatre, Snowdon playing the unfortunate maid sincerely and Havlicek putting on a con- vincing performance as the arch-villain. Although the play was well acted, the general interpretation was too serious for a parody, which must be obviously overacted if the playwright's message is to be understood. The performance also had a few rough edges. i ng!

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Having never won the house play competition, Ketchum mounted a major effort to do so this year. The Real Inspector Hound, was, like Ketchum's plays of many previous years. more demanding and complex than most other plays presented, yet it had a lighter side. The cast was the most experienced. The yyork put into the Ket- chum play, from Steve Frank's backdrop through the acting and Macfarlane's directing, was awesome. When performed, the play's acting and direction were superb. Frank and Taylor were good Comics yy hile licr and Macfarlane acted extremely well. It came as quite a shock, to some, that the play did not win, although it did capture major acting awards lincluding Macfarlane as best actorj. In retrospect, the over-confidence of the production. its lack of simplicity and wit and a slight staleness from overworking were its downfalls. Brent house produced Clevinger's Trial, a play based on a chapter of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. This play was perhaps ideal for the festival in that it was extremely simple, short, full of humour, and yet by far the most profound house play of recent years. The play exposes hypocrisy, injustice and perversity by means of an ex- tremely witty dialogueg yet it relies very little on movement and complex action, so justice may be done to it by amateur actors. The play concerns itself with the trial of an innocent soldier tjewettl, who continues to believe in the system which abuses him. His insane accusers are led by a totally perverse colonel twell portrayed by Wingi and two spineless, ambitious, buckish officers, played by Maclaren and Vasila. The play also features a facetious stenographer fPhil1ipsJ and the only sane person left fAgostinil. Apart from brilliant plays on words and great characterization, the play was extremely lively and spon- taneous. Despite the cast's humble expectations, Brent house won the festival. F i 'gil YQ