VICTORIAN PAGEANT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 128, 5 December 1941, Page 11

VICTORIAN PAGEANT

NBS Series Continues T will not be the fault of W. Graeme Holder and the NBS play production department if a detailed account of the manners, morals and day-to-day life of England during the reign of Queen Victoria is not left recorded on wax for future generatioris. The ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth of the Victoriana series have been completed by the NBS, and will be heard from the National stations asx soon as a place can be found for them in the programmes, Mr. Holder, who by. now is something of an expert on Victorian England, has outdone himself in his latest

Victorianas; the pageant of life during those days of rectitude and busy imperialism is carried on in a form sufficiently dramatic to hold the attention even of those to whom the word Victorianism means only bric-a-brac, antimacassars, and assiduous church-going. Victoriana No. 9 is a page from a Victorian sketch book, and presents the days of the Crimean War through the eyes of .a member of a typical English family. The play is interesting for the fine performance of Rosemary Miller, a small girl of ten years who had an important part in Tagore’s play The Post Office. No. 10 deals particularly with the Indian Mutiny, and brings on the scene Victoria herself, Albert, Palmerston and other famous figures, together with the reactions and impressions of Matthew and Thomas, two men-about-London-town, "A Musician Remembers" is the sub-title of No. ak; which is a blend of music, politics, and scientific progress, The attempted assassination of Napoleon III. and the discovery of the laryngoscope, a medical sensation of the day,, are’ among the events recalled. The sub-title of Victoriana No. 12, the last scene of which was recorded a few days ago, is "The Tosher," and it is an excursion into the "low life" of London, "The Tosher" himself is an enterprising gentleman who fishes among the refuse of the underground drains of the city for coins and articles of value which have been washed down from the streets above.