THE UNFORGIVEN HARVEST and THE LEAD WAIT, Jo Randerson

This book contains two plays by playwright Jo Randerson. It was published by PlayMarket as part of their ongoing New Zealand Play Series. 

Front cover

The single-colour-plus-black-and-white colour scheme of the colour is in keeping with the style of the series, as is the treatment of text inside, including headings. The results of using style template vary: some elements of the book, such as the cover, end up looking great within the limitations of the style template, while other parts of the book suffer.

The Table of Contents. Note odd pseudo-hierarchy caused
by fitting the text to the template

One part of the book that is not served well by the template is the table of contents. The contents list is laid out to resemble an old-fashioned poster with block font. The words are individually sized to fit the text box side-to-side. However, as Randerson’s plays have long names, this means they are presented in smaller font than less important sections such as the Foreword. The middle three items and the first line of the fourth are all around the same size, squished between ‘Foreword’ and ‘Harvest’. The eye jumps from Foreword to Harvest, with the narrow, even leading between each line (regardless of whether the next line is a new item or not) making the squished contents difficult to parse.

That said, the font used is an attractive one, tough and no-nonsense with an oddly Wild West feel. It is used for headings throughout the book, as on the verso opposite the contents page. Here, unconstrained by the text box and with more leading separating it from the text above and below, the font loses its cramped feel and there are no barriers to parsing it.

The pseudo-cover page for The Lead Wait

The book has no half title page; instead, it has one title page, and two additional part titles, or pseudo-covers, for the plays.  These part titles have an entirely black background, with the text and illustration standing out in white and grey. This is a great use of single-colour inking to create a distinctive look, and also helps with navigation – if you know that you want to skip straight to the start of the first or the second play in the book, just flick through the pages until you land on a black one. 

Another unusual aspect of the part title pages is that in addition to being colour-reversed, they do not use the same headings font as is used elsewhere in the book. Instead, they use the same font as on the cover. This gives them a sense of being secondary cover pages, rather than traditional title pages. The use of illustrations on the pages adds to this effect. 

Pages of text. Note that the verso begins with several paragraphs
of stage directions, followed by a line halfway down the page -
hard to remember who is talking, and you'd have to flick back a
page to be reminded

The body text is consistently laid out according to the series style. Page numbers are on the upper outer corner of each page, accompanied by a header stating the name of the play. the margins give plenty of room to hold the book without obscuring the text, and the use of all-caps and bold makes it easy to see who is speaking – so long as there isn’t a long section of stage directions in between their lines.

Overall the book has a solid design that works well to tie all the books in this series together, but which does not work perfectly for all the individual elements of these particular plays.

Samples collected: 29 June 2012