SPOKEN VERSE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12611, 23 November 1926, Page 9

SPOKEN VERSE

AN INTERESTING RECITAL. To speak verse beautifully three things are necessary, a fine voice, a decided sense of rhythm, and a share of poetry. The second is not the least important, since tho tendency of so many elocutionists nowadays is to treat verse, notably blank verse, as prose, and the result is enough to make any poetry-lover writhe. It is like playing a Beethoven symphony all in one beat, and that a tempo foreign to the score. It robs the work of meaning, it is a sign oT Philistinism in the extreme. Against such folk of these Miss Clodagh Russell directs an attack. Miss Russell, who gave a verse-speak-ing recital in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall last evening, has won high honours as a student and possesses a subtle sense of rhythm, a definite personality and appeal, and a nice taste. She dramatises some of her lyrics which is excusable for it is well done. Her voice is not of unusual quality, but the thought which has gone to the preparation of her numbers, her evident feeling, and well chosen poems made her recital refreshing- Perhaps, like so many others, she is prone to pay rather much adoration to the rising inflection, which when practised in such a work as Sassoon’s 1 ‘Everyone Sang,” assails the ear unkindly and drives away any chance of realisation of the. evanescentbeauty of tfi© little thing; perhaps sometimes she adopts speed until in the mouth of one less practised in delivery it would become mere gabble (“The War Song of the Saracens”), hut the compensations are many and great. Miss Russell’s programme was lengthy, and included extracts from the “HippoOytus” of Euripides, in Gilbert Murray’s translation; the Psalms; “To the Night” (Shelley), “My Love” (Burns), “Corinna Going a-Maying” (Robert Herrick), a scene from “Much Ado,” some Christopher Robin numbers, “The House Beautiful” (R. L. Stevenson), “Wanderthirst” (Gerald Gould), “Everyone Sang” (Siegfried Sassoon), “The War Song of the Saracens” (Flecker), “Pierrot” (Drinkwater), “The Fiddler of Dooney” and “When You are Old” (Yeats), and “Drake’s Drum” (Newbolt).