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WELL WROUGHT John Smythe on the rich legacy of Bruce Mason.
Even now, as we mark the centenary of Bruce Mason’s birth, I would challenge anyone to witness good productions of his plays without identifying, relating, feeling, thinking and questioning. A playwright by vocation, Mason was driven to interrogate himself and the world at large in dramatic ways that draw audiences into the enquiry. His experiences of family life in Takapuna (fictionalised as Te Parenga), study at Victoria College, war service in the Royal Navy; his work on a citrus farm, as a public servant, in advertising and as editor of Te Ao Hou; his being a husband and father and astute observer of those around him... All these realities feed his vivid imagination along with his humanity, insights and sharp wit. A master craftsman of well-wrought plays, in which flawed people with formative pasts navigate the present in light of their future objectives, Mason invariably challenges us to test our own values as we judge his characters. While each play is anchored in time and place, by blending fact, fiction, reality and fantasy in his quest for that elusive taonga, ‘truth’, his distillations of the particular and personal are timeless and universal.
Most particular and personal are his suite of autobiographical solos – The End of the Golden Weather (childhood; loss of innocence) – remounted in 2021 as Every Kind of Weather, directed by Shane Bosher and performed in repertoire by Stephen Lovatt, Not Christmas But Guy Fawkes (adolescence; self-satirising) and Courting Blackbird (young adulthood; political awakening). Mason’s early short and satirical plays include The Bonds of Love and The Evening Paper, which provocatively contrast male and female archetypes in very different ways. The failure of Kiwi men to form fulfilling relationships with women and the stultifying conformity of suburban life in the ‘50s are insightfully critiqued. The central focus of his first full-length play, The Pohutukawa Tree, is a whaea and determined kaitiaki of what little ancestral whenua is left. She, her teenage children and their land are profoundly affected by the actions of a comprehensive range of Pākehā men and women. An acknowledged classic, its themes remain as resonant as ever. It was the eloquence of te reo, in which he became fluent, that drew Mason to tikanga Māori. Commissioned to write a radio play for
