NEW PRODUCTIONS FROM NBS STUDIOS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 354, 5 April 1946, Page 13

NEW PRODUCTIONS FROM NBS STUDIOS

OR the last few weeks all the concentrated nastiness of Armand Jean Du Plessis de Richelieu, the scheming French cardinal, has hung around the production studios of the NBS. But Bernard Beeby and his cast of actors and actresses have now turned to a

different type of entertainment-topi-cal rather than historic. When we called the other day Richelieu had just been tucked away in his tomb in the 55th (and final) episode of this serial, and the staff was busy with preparations to produce several short plays, at the rate of one a week.

| People who take part in radio plays are generally talented amateurs, taken from all sorts of daily occupations. The lawyer who draws your will might be an international crook in a crime drama when he isn’t untying knots in red tape; the shipping clerk, whose sympathetic eye you try to catch from the end of the queue, may be a fairy prince in his radio moments, and the girl who says "Sorry" ‘to your request for a packet of cigarettes might be a beautiful spy when facing the microphone. As a wide range of talent is called for, fresh performers are always welcomed at the studios, mainly with the idea of presenting voices that are new to listeners. Coming Attractions Maltby’s The Rotters, a one-hour comedy of a respectable family which turns out to be not quite so reputable, has been produced and recorded and will be on the air shortly. Another play on which the cast is now engaged is One Hour, One Night, by Edward Harding. This is a spy story dealing not so much with war as with international intrigue. The action starts with an unwise purchase of black market cigarettes and introduces a special branch of Scotland Yard. A thread of comedy runs through the play, though it is more in the situations than in the actual lines. Other plays going into production shortly will be Campground’s Over Jordan, by the Auckland writer John Gundry, and Breaking Point, by Mabel Constanduros. The first is a problem play whose main characters are a selfish husband, and a wife who is a concert pianist. The second is a stage play about a music-hall actress married to an aristocratic waster who enjoys her high salary while she is in love with somebody else.