THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

T’S a long leap from the gum trees ot Snake Gully to the highbrow-haunted heights of Hampstead Heath, but it’s a leap the NBS has no hesitation in attempting. If you’re tunedinto 3YA next Tuesday night you will find yourself at 7.52 helping Dad to solve a weighty problem of Dave and Mabel, and a minute later you'll be soaking in sophistication from the songs of Noel Coward. The latter programme includes the well-known waltz song "I'll See You Again," which was sung so feelingly by Mr. Coward on his recent semi-official tour of New Zealand. Those who disliked Mr. Coward on that occasion probably hope he won’t. However, the title of the song will remind the keen Coward fan of Noel Coward’s latest play, Blythe Spirit, which slapsticks with seances, poltergeists, and psychic disturbances, Mementos Knowing as we do the enthusiasm of ZB audiences and the pains which they will take to secure a lock of hair, a trouser-button or some such intimate reminder of their favourite announcer or technician, we were assailed by fears for the future of the new 1ZB building in Auckland. In our mind’s eye we could see the noble framework filched away, brick by brick, the precious plateglass pinched, the strip-lighting stripped bare, the murals mucked about, even the Knovachord knocked out. And apparently our fears were shared by the 1ZB staff. At any rate, they were quick

-_- to include in their reorganised programmes a special ‘session, to be heard on Wednesday evenings at 8.30, entitled Souvenirs. Alchemistry If we had not been told that Dr. C. M. Focken proposed to talk about "Alchemy To-day" from 4YA on Tuesday evening next, we would have said that alchemy was as much out-of-date as alcapone, or, at any rate, that it was something outside the province and beneath the notice of a man of science-

like those marvellous philtres which, their makers swear, will Make You Glow with Personal Magnetism, Add Six Inches to Your Chest, or a cubit to your stature-or ‘your money back. These potions which, if our artist is to be believed, are brewed at or about the Witching Hour and with benefit of cabalistic kimono and black cat, represent, we would have thought, all that alchemy had left to us. But perhaps we would have been wrong. Maybe Rutherford’s attacks on the atom, and the work of his successors in subtracting protons and disrupting nuclei is in the direct line of descent from the Philosopher’s Stone and all that. Time (Tuesday, 7.35 p.m., 4YA), and Dr. Focken will tell.

Hay Nonny No Hay, as every schoolboy knows, should be made when the sun shines. Beyond that, our knowledge carries us little further. What, for example, happens in places like Wellington, Greymouth, and Passamaquoddy (Pa.) where there must be insuperable difficulties in the way of effecting a fortuitous conjunction of sunshine and the necessary raw material of grasses? That has us stumped and completely, hay-diddle-diddled. But it is simple stuff to Messrs. J. W. Calder and A. H. Flay, who, under the beneficent auspices of Canterbury Agricultural College, are to talk about "Hay Making" from 3YA on Thursday evening of next week. Tale of the Russian Greyhound It is interesting in these days of Percy Westerman and Geo. E. Rochester, to lean back in the editorial chair and muse on the yarn-spinners of our youth. Major Charles Gilson was one, who with his stories of the Secret Service, inspired us with literary longings. Perhaps the most versatile, however, was

— 2 the French scientist with the imaginative brain, Jules Verne. It was a great pastime to admire .the way in which the Nautilus preceded the common or garden submarine and. to. speculate whether the moon-rocket would achieve a similar fame. Jules Verne’s romance didn’t rest solely on the glamour of his scientific calculations or inventions, however, but included much exciting narrative. Do you remember the thrill of the race round the world in eighty days with a detective in pursuit? Although we regret not to have read it, we presume that Michael Strogoff, Courier for the Tsar, is of this adventurous rather than inventive type, It is the title of a serial adapted from Jules Verne and to be played from 3YA on Tuesday at one minute past eight. Descensus Averni East is East and West is West, but it doesn’t matter a continental to Major Lampen-it doesn’t even matter which continental-and just as our indefatigable and gallant friend thinks nothing of weaving a girdle round the earth in an easterly or westerly direction in 15 minutes of programme time, so he is equally at home travelling north or south through the generally impenetrable social strata. Some little time ago, if our memory serves us right (and it serves: us right if it does), our inde-

fatigable and gallant etc. was hobnobbing with royalty. Now, for the benefit of 4YA listeners, he will be taking the plunge down into the submerged tenth on Thursday next, with a talk entitled "Just a Night in Slumland." We do not know if he throws himself as wholeheartedly into his Haroun-al-Raschid role as our invariably irresponsible artist | would imply, but, knowing er Lampen, we feel sure that even if he cannot use his glittering eye he will, as usual, hold his audience like any ancient mariner. Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? There are many, far too many, theories about Shakespeare. There is the old one about Shakespeare not being written by Shakespeare but by Bacon, and then there’s the whole family of Hamlet theories,, including the one that there is no Hamlet theory, but that Shakespeare merely had to fill in somehow the three hours gap between the murder in the first scene and the revenge in the last scene. And H. L.

Mencken, the American critic, has come forward with an alternative theory about Romeo and Juliet. His idea is that Shakespeare wrote it as a scathing satire on the contemporary ultra-romantic tragedy, probably in a moment when he was regretting his marriage with Ann Hathaway. Mencken states with conviction that after fifteen years of unhappy married life a middle-aged man could not be expected to take a serious view of a fourteen-year-old girl’s attitude to Romance. But both those who prefer to keep their illusions and the few who subscribe to Mencken’s. view will be able to listen in to a special version of Gounod’s opera, Romeo and _ Juliet, which will be broadcast from 4YA next Sunday evening. Water We suspect that a fair number of Devonport and Takapuna listeners will tune in to 1YA on Thursday of next week with something like mixed feelings for that evening the Auckland station is to broadcast the feature "When Dreams Come True: Water Comes to a Metropolis." And water is rather a sore topic with those unfortunate citizens, for on the North Shore one does not need the nose of an Umslopogaas ("Inkoos, I smell water") to detect the close proximity of Pupuke’s acqua impura. The North Shore dream of a supply of sweet Waitakerei water is still unfulfilled, but it is said that the new service won’t be long now, so perhaps the broadcast will not be inappropriate after all. f