Doubly Star-Crossed Lovers
RECENTLY inveighed against the practice of turning perfectly good Shakespeare into dubious opera; but everything deplorable in this practice pales beside the limp and damp tastelessness of a ten-minute musical comedy heard recently and featuring several stars of radio comedy whom under normal circumstances I love and revere. The play ‘chosen was one of those operatised — ‘Romeo and Juliet’-and why it should be clever or funny to turn this. into a musical comedy, littered with
positively mummified gags and tunes which attempt to burlesque comedy airs and succeed only in being weak imitations, eye hath not yet seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. "I’m fearfully sorry, Romeo old boy, but you’ve been banished from the jolly old city"-this is the expression of an utter mindlessness that makes one entertain fears for the future of civilisation. Queen Victoria had a word for it.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19451221.2.18.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 8
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154Doubly Star-Crossed Lovers New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 8
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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