THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 25, 15 December 1939, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

OME New Zealanders have taken their Christmas turkey and duff with snow outside the windows, log fires burning. But not many, for here it is supposed to be hot on December 25. The duff becomes fruit salad, the turkey cold chicken, and often they are eaten with a live tree to keep the heat off instead of a dead log to supply it. In England (or should we say Great Britain?), in spite of A.R.P., B.O., and A.H., they are still looking forward to some sort of festivity, but in a rather cooler atmosphere. Comparisons will be drawn by two talks next week. Nelle M. Scanlan will talk of Christmases in England and New Zealand at 7.35 p.m. on Thursday, December 21, from 3YA; and "Christmas in June" will be the title of a talk from Mrs. Carrie Wallace, from 2YA at 10.45 a.m. on the same day. Maskelyne Magic Fascinated by the evidently impenetrable trickery, L.D. Austin (who presents a talk from 2YA at 7.40 p.m. on Thursday, December 21) used to go week after week to see Maske-

lyne, "The Father of Magicians," performing in the famous Piccadilly Egyptian Hall. Mr. Austin has many personal reminiscences of the great conjuror and will use them in his talk to celebrate the Maskelyne centennial. Maskelyne was born in 1839 of a Gloustershire farming family. He first won fame by exposing a so-called spiritualistic séance as a conjuring trick-upon which, incidentally, he was able to improve, to make the baffling " box-trick."

Christmas for Cripples Smiles will be the vogue and infirmities out of fashion when the crippled children of Christchurch assemble at the Winter Garden for their annual Christmas party on Saturday, December 23. Not that they often need » cheering up-they’re amazingly cheerful little souls-but smiles will be bigger and brighter for the sake of this celebration. Station 3YA has found it worth celebrating too, and will broadcast from the Winter Garden at 2.30 p.m. Princess's Present Once, in Monte Carlo, a Russian princess did not like the tone of the violin used by an entertainer. She had him brought before her and, mythical as the story may sound, presented him with a most beautiful violin. This instrument was soon openly coveted by the fiddler’s son. and the father agreed to give it to him "When he could do justice to it." The boy studied hard, and when he could play two difficult concertos, he became the proud possessor of the rare violin. Father and son were called Mantovani. Mantovani junior, now famous, is heard frequently with his orchestra over the National Stations. Good Samaritan Few English novelists have been more pre-occupied with social problems than John Galsworthy, yet he was far too great a writer ever to let his stories and plays become dull or wordy. That is why " The Pigeon," which sums up diverse aspects of the conflict between poverty and wealth, is always interesting for its human touches. It tells of a modern Good Samaritan, the artist Wellwyn, who befriended "down-and-outs," a Christian idea which does not make things easy for him. "The Pigeon" is to be presented from 3YA Christchurch, at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, December 17. Archbishop Murdered In the time of Thomas a Becket, Church and State were closely related. The Church | was as much an instrument of power and -. domination as the Government. The play, "Murder In The Cathedral" by T. S. Eliot, tells more than the murder, by the four knights, of the Archbishop on the altar steps. It tells also of the struggle between temporal power and the Church, which Becket -gought to divorce from the intrigues of State

affairs, But apart from its significance as a presentation of a great problem-the neverending conflict between allegiances-* Murder In The Cathedral" is a moving work by one of England’s greatest living poets, and listeners should find the performance arranged by Professor W. A. Sewell and A. J. C. Fisher, from 1YA, Auckland, at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, December 17, eminently worth hearing. Two Children And Gingerbread Many great writers turned to the nursery for inspiration. Lewis Carrol wrote his " Alice in Wonderland" for a little girl, Thackeray’s "The Rose and the Ring" was originally written for children; and Humperdinck was so charmed by the delightful little fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, who were driven into the woods, where they found the gingerbread house of the Crust Witch, that he wrote his opera on the theme, Humperdinck assisted Wagner when the composer was copying "Parsifal," and wrote in the same style. Listeners may detect this relation between the man who wrote his operas on the mighty myths of antiquity and the man who wrote on simple, nursery-tale themes when " Hansel and Gretel" is presented from 4YA Dunedin, at 9.25 p.m. on Sunday, December Eg Open Sesame You have gathered from the heading to this paragraph that we are talking about "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." No two words from a story were ever better known. And of course, you remember the story (from the Arabian saga of the Thousand and One Nights) in which Ali Baba watches the thievish band enter a cave through a massive rock by saying the magic two words. He himself goes in later, there to find priceless treasures-rubies, sapphires, pearls, diamonds and gold uncounted; and then .. . but of course you know the story as well as we do. Still, we’re sure that won't stop you tuning in to the pantomime version, presented by overseas artists and old pantomime favourites, from 1YA Auckland at 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 23. Look and See For Mrs. B, J. Marples, who talks from 4YA at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 19, the sunny seaside is more than a place at which the gentle summer waves break upon the dimpled summer sand. There are rocks, and green, clear pools, with little fish, and shells, and queer sea insects scurrying among

them. Her theory about enjoying a holiday means seeing things a little more clearly than other people, and her talk is intended to help listeners to this magic vision, in which knowledge illuminates all small things and enlarges all small interests. Locusts At one stage in his varied career, W. Graeme-Holder was on the ship Star of Japan off Cape Verde (it was in 1906) when a great cloud of locusts descended to drown, "In a swarm," he says, "they sound like the roar of the sea in the distance, and the sound becomes like the roar of a waterfall as they descend." About this experience he has built up a play, "Locusts" which is to be broadcast from 1YA on Monday, December 18, at 8 p.m. In the Bible, the terrible story of locust plagues was told, and still the pests come to ravage the work of helpless man, Listeners who have seen the film "The Good Earth," with its wonderful photography of an actual swarm coming in its millions through a gap in a mountain range, will only need a reminder that Mr. Holder handles dramatic subjects with dramatic force and is at his best with this particular plot.

Glamour, B.C. Glamour, so we are told, has now been reduced to a formula. You use so and so’s face cream, this powder, that rouge, such and such a coiffure, and leave the rest to your dressmaker and the imagination. But reputations were harder come by in olden times, They had to go in for glamour in a big way to hit the ancient headlines. So listeners can be sure that the "Glamour Girls of the Ancient World" selected by Elsie K. Morton for her talk from 2YA at 10.45 a.m. on Tuesday, December 19, really earned their selection and will be worth a twist of the dial to 526 metres.