Listening While I work (39)

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 269, 18 August 1944, Page 20

Listening While I work (39)

Loe By

Matertamilias

HOSE who like to hear about the fighting forces will enjoy the BBC’s "eye witness reports" series. Last week I mentioned one programme, To See the Vacant Sea, which I heard from 2YA. On Sunday evening I heard a sigilar, if rather less ambitious, programme from 2ZB, Escort Destroyer. There is nothing sensational about ‘this. We do not hear a naval battle, with ships or U-boats sunk; there are no hours in the water before rescue comes. The reporter goes aboard a destroyer that is escorting a convoy up the Channel to Scotland. It is a dangerous route, and we get the feeling of tense alertness as the convoy makes its way up the coast, prepared for attack from surface ship, plane or submarine. There is no more to it than that, but it is an attempt to bring to friends and relatives and all who can inggine the dangers that go with the ordinary routine work at sea in wartime, a halfhour of living experience. %* * * HERE is one special difficulty in radio plays and programmes.- We get to know disembodied voices even better than we know stage or screen actors. True, our screen stars tend to become typed in certain roles. Charles Laughton will always be Henry VIII. for some and Captain Bligh for others, while George Arliss was inevitably Disraeli. But an actor can do much with his grease paint and costume, It is not so easy when you have to rely entirely on your voice. It has been worrying me lately to find the principal players in The Man Born to be King, whose voices are now familiar to most of those who listened to these plays, popping up in all sorts of unexpected BBC features, The disciple, John, with that distinctive hesitation in his speech, turns up disconcertingly. All sorts of small mannerisms and little turns of accent that might never be noticed on the stage are easily recognised over the air. It would, I think, be safe to assume that radio play producers will have to call upon an increasingly wide variety of actors to prevent the listening public from becoming too familiar with a small group of voices. * * * ‘THE Wednesday night BBC play The Ghost in Your House was a simple ghost story without shrieks, clattering chains, or creaking chairs. It was a yarn centring round a murder, and the unexpected end-not altogether unexpected, either -also satisfactorily laid the ghost. A pleasant interlude, not suitable for younger children, ‘but generally harmless and_ entertaining for parents and others. * * * SOMEWHAT unusual BBC feature was the reading of poetry about Swans (2YA, Sunday, August 6). We do not have much reading of poetry over the air, and probably most adults do not hear much try read at all, I browse so seldom among poets that I like to be reminded of the poems that I used to enjoy, and I like to hear others that are new to me, I found the reader’s voice in this case rather too low and rather too mournful. But I enjoyed this unexpected programme.