Mangawhai theatre group wows audiences

 

BY JULIA WADE

With sell-out shows and standing ovations, a brand-new local theatre’s opening performance of a 50-year-old classic play has wowed audiences and established the group as Mangawhai’s thespian company.

Actors with recentlyformed theatre group Mangawhai Players took to the Mangawhai Library Hall stage on November 29, 30 and December 1, performing the 1954 masterpiece Under Milk Wood by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, to three full houses. The warm, generous response from audiences ‘was hugely gratifying and amazing… a dream come true for us all’ said Mangawhai Players founder Susan Dugdale.

“The play was a success through the work of many… it was an extraordinary celebration of community, people coming together from all sorts of different backgrounds with varying degrees  of theatrical experience – from zilch to a lot – all of whom were willing to work incredibly hard to achieve something very special,” she says.

“It was a thrilling journey, humbling, exciting, fun, the full gamut! I loved it.”  For the past three months, the adult cast dedicated two to three hours of their Sunday afternoon to rehearse the play, with the three narrators having to practise an additional two hours every week to memorise their many lines.

Rehearsal hours ramped up in October with extra weekly sessions ‘to get the flow right of those snappy sequences’, and for the last two weeks before curtain call, the adults were joined by the child cast, who had been rehearsing for one hour over six weeks. “As fortune would have it, these perfect young people emerged to play the children’s parts, and oh, how they shone!” she says.

“Huge thanks to each of these talented youngsters and their parents for your support and encouragement.” Although ‘still recovering’, Dugdale says there will be another show as ticket sales along with ‘the generosity of Rush Coffee owners’ Hayden and Emma Prujean, has enabled the Players to establish as a theatre group.

“The community obviously wants what we have to offer,” she says. “Thank you to all you wonderful folk who came and enjoyed Under Milk Wood. You’ve helped us launch something special.”