STILL SUFFERS FROM "MIKE FRIGHT"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 42

STILL SUFFERS FROM "MIKE FRIGHT"

Lynda Hastings An Experienced Broadcaster

YNDA HASTINGS, well known Wellington repertory player who is starred in several of the "Real Life Stories" produced by the Commercial Service, has broadcast from the BBC, and in New Zealand from both YA and ZB stations, but she still confesses to an inferiority complex every time she faces a microphone. Broadcasting. technique, she points out, especially as it affects breathing, is so vastly different from stage technique; and then, as most stage artists complain, there is a terrifying absence of an audience. For some years, Mrs. Hastings has been one of the most sought-after repertory players in Auckland and Wellington. In Auckland, as Lynda Murphy, she played leading parts for the Little Theatre Society and the Amateur Operatic Society. Her first big part, in fact, was in the Operatic Society’s production of Our Miss Gibbs. Auckland theatre-goers will remember her most clearly, however, as Lisa in Pygmalion, staged by Kenneth Brampton for the Little Theatre Society. In Wellington, she has appeared mostly in Repertory Theatre shows, including The Marquise, in which she again played a name part. Last year, she was one of a select group ‘of local artists who were invited to join the J. C. Williamson company which toured New Zealand with the plays Yes, My Darling Daughter, It’s a Wise Child, and I Killed the Count. It was a strenuous experience, she:says, and for her the chief interest lay in the technique of the producer, Roland Edwards, an American, who produced comedy along strictly American lines. Lynda Hastings has done varied work for radio, both from the YA and ZB stations. She played in three Shakespearian plays, As You Like It, Richard

the Second, and Hamlet for the NBS; and 2ZB listeners will remember her for her bright character sketches and for a "Journal of the Air" which she conducted twice a week for a year on behalf of a Wellington store. It was when she was on holiday in England in 1939 that she stormed the BBC. She gave a talk on Maori life in the "Hands Across the Sea" programme, and. she also broadcast a series of sketches. The "Real Life Stories" in which she is now appearing for the Commercial Broadcasting Service, are a series of human interest stories based on scripts which have proved remarkably popular in America. They will start from all ZB stations on April 7, and will be heard every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7.30 p.m.