The Barch 'Are and the Bad 'Atter

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 360, 17 May 1946, Page 10

The Barch 'Are and the Bad 'Atter

qT HAVE had occasion in these columns to question the propriety of the dramatised (or Slaughtered) version of "Alice in Wonderland" which the National Stations from time to*time present; and I therefore listened with especial interest to Mr. Simmance’s reading of excerpts from the original. In the first place, of course, a reading poSsesses far more cohesion than a dramatised fiveminute summary. Mr. Simmance dealt

only with the baby that turned into a pig ("it does sometimes"), the Cheshire cat and the March Hare’s Tea Party. In the Slaughtered version, you may recall, Alice’s dealings with the Cat and the Hatter take the form of songs, which cannot be found in Lewis Carroll, and quite right too. Mr. Simmance with time on his hands .to do the thing properly, gives us the actual conversation unfolding in its full logical grandeur. The book, after all, is a conversation piece far more than a series of events--though one might not say the same of the "Looking

Glass." Mr. Simmance’s is the true Alice -infinitely polite, often worried, sometimes resentful, but always heroically upholding the banner of civilised reason; the Slaughtered version of Alice is a cheeky little puss. On the other hand, Mr. Simmance’s reading of the Mad Hatter is nearer to Arthur Askey than I had expected; at least, he endowed him with the shabbiness and the highpitched didacticismi of many of the great radio comedians-there was more than a touch of Harry Tate. But what was it that impelled him to give the March Hare the intonation of a costermonger with adenoids? I suppose the shape of the creature’s dose gave hib the dotiod.