Three New Zealanders: Ngaio Marsh

Three New Zealanders was a documentary series that looked at the lives of three of NZ's most celebrated writers: Sylvia-Ashton Warner, Janet Frame and Dame Ngaio Marsh. Produced by Endeavour Films (John Barnett), the final chapter of this three-part series centres on internationally acclaimed crime-writer and Shakespearean director Dame Ngaio Marsh. It contains an interview with Marsh in her later years, interspersed with comments from former students and friends, and re-enactments from her novels (with the Blerta crew as players, and John Bach as Hamlet!).

Here is this governess in a gentile Canterbury home reading to a little girl, not of fairies or well-behaved Victorian heroes but of King Lear, Shakespeare at his most cataclysmic speaking of cruelty.

– Narrator, on Ngaio's childhood being read to by Ms Ffitch

Key Cast & Crew

Bruce Clark

Director

John Barnett

Producer

Geoff Murphy

Actor

Martyn Sanderson

Actor

John Bach

As: Hamlet

Keith Hawke

Camera