Totara College seniors put on a moving morality play, The Trial of Trimmer Trend

After earlier plans to hit the stage were postponed by the Covid-19 lockdown, The Trial of Trimmer Trend was finally presented by Totara College senior students to audiences in the Fountain Theatre on Friday October 23, the first at 1.30pm to students and parents and the second at 7pm to the general public.

This was a morality play which typifies virtues and vices, written brilliantly to help people see the absurdity of running away from one's own conscience and from the Word of God.

Mr Trimmer, very well performed by Josiah Max, makes his pilgrimage, a downhill descent towards death and judgment, as he ignores the truth and heeds false counsellors with names like Tonguely Smoothcheek (Lile Dean), Morality Slipping (Piper Carnie) and Doctor Glossover Thinly (Lily Sutton).

He is rescued only by turning to the Cross at the eleventh hour.

The cast was script perfect after only several weeks of rehearsal and they all performed their roles with conviction. The entire senior school was on stage and in tune with the script.

While Josiah Max played the pivotal role of Trimmer Trend realistically as he struggled with a troubled conscience over his business and marital misdoings, it was his tortured Conscience, played powerfully by Keon Graham, who gained the sympathy of the audience as one after another Trimmer's actions caused him an increasing burden of pain represented by heavy bags around his neck.

Director Ruth Peters and assistant director Malachi Dean put together a powerful production mixing morality and humour, action and debate best summarised in the statement made in Trimmer's defence at the trial, "He never would have done what he did had he known what he was doing."