Projected behind the jutting set for Brigadier, war artist Peter McIntyres famed painting of New Zealand soldiers parachuting into World War 2 Crete comes alive.
The white chutes actually start to fall; an almost weeping descent.
This animation, achieved by multimedia producer Bryan Campbell delights the plays writer-director Jonathan Tucker.
The Invercargill school that bears James Hargests name is nothing if not vibrant, seldom out of the news for the achievement of its pupils.
However, the feats behind the man himself, whose slightly chubby face, (more kindly than hawkish) looks out from the photo in the schools foyer, have perhaps become calcified in history.
Time to revive it. Animate it.
Maybe even adrenalise it.
Tucker is doubly qualified for the job. Hes a four-decade teacher at James Hargest High School (now James Hargest College). And hes a veteran Invercargill Repertory director.
Brigadier wont be a respectfully dull plod through a worthy tale.
Nor is it a work of fashionable revisionism.
Purse-lipped historians will wait in vain for any pained re-examination of the loss of the Maleme airfield, or the closer intricacies of Brigadier Hargests criticisms of General Bernard Freyberg.
Instead, says Tucker: %26quot;Ive got this Boys Own story about the characters (Hargest) knew in his life and it shows the mans resolve. A man of action.%26quot; Campbell agrees.
%26quot;I love the chaos of this (story),%26quot; he says.
Much as the production calls heavily on his own audio-visual skills %26quot;to push it fast%26quot; Campbell is the first to say these thoroughly modern techniques are only there to serve a story of old fashioned heroism.
James Hargest was the Gore-born son of a labourer-farmer. He laid the foundation of his military life while living alone in a rabbiters camp on the Hokonui Hills with his military manual for reading.
One of New Zealands most distinguished World War 1 soldiers, he was seriously wounded taking a leading part in the Suvla Bay battle at Gallipoli, won the Military Cross for gallantry at the Somme, played an important part in preparations for the battle of Messines, and aged 26 became a battalion commander, first of the 1st Otagos, then the 2nd Otagos.
He was badly wounded in November 1918. Awarded the DSO, and Legion of Honour, and twice mentioned in dispatches.
Between wars he and wife Marie, an army nurse with a distinguished war record of her own, farmed at Rakauhauka, near Invercargill. After two unsuccessful candidacies, Hargest became Invercargill MP then Awarua MP.
Though deemed unfit for overseas service in World War 2 because of lingering effects of shellshock he appealed successfully to Prime Minister Peter Fraser, who wrote %26quot;he came to me with despair in his eyes and his heart%26quot;.
Hargests World War 2 career was again dramatic. As brigadier he commanded the Fifth Brigade with distinction during the Greek campaign, with a successful delaying action at Olympus Pass.
Then came a painful defeat as he failed to hold Maleme Airport in the loss of Crete. With men still stranded on the island, himself dirty and unshaven, and feeling %26quot;like a mother defending her young%26quot; he pushed his way to a meeting to confront General Archibald Wavell and Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham with what he later called %26quot;the truth of many things, without once knuckling down%26quot;.
Later captured by Rommel at Sidi Aziz in Libya, he was imprisoned with senior officers at a castle near Florence; but dramatically escaped in a bid which claimed the life of fellow New Zealander, Brigadier Reginald Miles.
He was the sole New Zealand observer at D-Day, after which he was active in hazardous close-to-the-line monitoring.
It was there that he was killed by a shell burst in Normandy. He was also, still, a sitting MP, one of five killed in active service during the war.
At Parliament, Peter Fraser paid emotional tribute to %26quot;a man of unsurpassed courage and daring%26quot; .
Jonathan Tucker had a problem.
His play needed a perspective.
Thank God for Stan Coo.
In a story populated by high-ranking officers, some of whom would put Blackadders General Melchett in the shade, Stanley Arthur Coo was anything but a toff. He was Hargests driver in Normandy, and as they camped out together, was uniquely placed to observe the Brigadier in the last two months of his life.
In later years, Coo proved a delightful storyteller himself, confirming accounts that for such a high-ranking officer, Hargest had no interest in stiff formality.
In a recorded interview, he recalls their first meeting.
%26quot;Im laid there, sunbathing, no boots on.
A bloke comes along … says theres an office over there wants to see you. I goes trotting along in my bare feet, no hat on, no shirt. Anyway, turned out to be the Brigadier. He had a Humber and hes brought some tinned food, tinned sweet stuff, you know pears and peaches. A big sack full of it there. He said can you put these in your vehicle? Well take em with us.
%26quot;That was the first time I met him. Couldnt very well stand to attention saluting with no bleeding clothes on. I could see him grinning to himself.%26quot; Coo came to feel he was the most shot-at soldier in the war.
The Brigadier seemed a magnet for trouble.
Once a mortar shell hit the road near them. %26quot;I see the Brigadier coming round the corner on his hands and knees.
Got him to his feet, he said: `That was a close one, Coo! He got 14 little wounds, nothing serious.%26quot; So it was straight back to divisional headquarters, where Hargest %26quot;gives them the exact location of where these mortars are … and the whole of the Div artillery opened up on this one spot. We went and had a look after and they didnt half blast it. There was four or five mortars all there hanging at different angles, bodies all over the place%26quot;.
%26quot;Unbeknown to me thats what wed been sent up there for, to find this bloody mortar battery that was holding them up.
He didnt tell me that.%26quot; Interviewer: He was more than just an observer then, wasnt he? Coo: %26quot;Oh yes, he was a big help.%26quot; Interviewer: The articles weve read said he was an observer.
Coo: %26quot;They had to give him some sort of a title; he wasnt supposed to be there at all. He was the only New Zealander on the invasion, the rest of the New Zealanders were all in Italy.%26quot; Describing another mortar attack, Coo betrays another nickname for Hargest: %26quot;Anyway, big B gets out and goes to find the Colonel of these infantry men who was holding the line. I gets out and sits down along side the jeep and then this bloody mortaring started up again and a voice from under the hedge shouted: For Christs sake piss off, every time you come here we get mortared.%26quot; That was the day Hargest died.
%26quot;As we set off back … they started mortaring us again. Just behind us all the way, and I was going like the hammers of hell and they was dropping just behind and when I got to the gate of the field with this very narrow lane, I had to drop into bottom gear and slowly turn around and thats when they hit him.
Hargests body shielded Coo.
%26quot;He got the lot. He was a big bloke.%26quot; The multi-level Brigadier set towers above a rehearsal room at Invercargill Repertory.
A jagged wire fence is exercising the mind of the production crew. Hargest must get over this, and gash his hand. So how are they going to achieve that particular special effect? %26quot;Hows about razor wire?%26quot; comes the bright suggestion. %26quot;We could stitch Andy back up every night.%26quot; At the other end of the set, Andy Wood, who plays Hargest, is indeed getting some hand coaching of a different sort.
Word has come in from Rakauhauka, where Hargests son Ken is on consultational stand-by: Only one hand in the pocket, Andy. Never two.
And though he could roar an order if he needed to, he wasnt a man to raise his voice needlessly. Just not his style.
The Brigadier set must serve as the Hokonui Hills, Crete, and quite a lot of Europe. Right now theyre still getting the dimensions just so.
%26quot;Could you go up a level?%26quot; goes the call to one incarcerated general.
%26quot;No then Id be in Switzerland.%26quot; If only the actual escape was as easy.
Tucker would have us know that for all that Hargests body had taken a pounding particularly a hip injury he, unlike the British generals, did his share digging the cramped tunnels under the castle walls, using table-knives and small iron bars to dig through brick, then rock.
Marc Colyer, who plays Coo, is catching up on some background biographical reading. %26quot;Learning your lines?%26quot; asks Tucker as he bustles past.
%26quot;Nope. Reading something a little more interesting,%26quot; Colyer idly cheeks him. Getting into character nicely, that one.
Brigadier will be performed at Centrestage Theatre, Invercargill on Sunday, March 23 and on a season running Saturday, March 29 to Saturday, April 5.
Tags:
amp,
artist peter,
fence,
minis,
rta,
suggestion
0
After growing up among steel mills near Dusseldorf, Germany, Juergen Mross felt very much at home when he moved to Pittsburgh in the 1970s. But he wasn’t as comfortable in the 1950s red-brick Colonial he and his wife, Renate, bought in Edgeworth in 1986. It was large enough for the couple and their four sons, but it had a small entrance and lacked character.