Hearing Voices

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 395, 17 January 1947, Page 8

Hearing Voices

ISTENING to a Nativity Play, The Lovely Lady of Bethlehem, from 3YA on Christmas Day, one recognised -with a slight shock the fruity confiding voice which had given us a Message from the Leader of the Opposition an hour earlier. Anyone who listens to NZBS plays and features must be familiar with the voices of the select band .of radio actors: the dignified one

~ who played Sir Kynaston Thrombosis, the famous surgeon, in "The Patient Only Coughs Once," and the stern but kind-hearted uncle in that drawing room drama, who was always shooting his cuffs and saying, "My boy, this is a grave decision, one of the turning points of your life" and the judge in "WellTempered Justice," and the whimsical Oxford don in "Quiet Flows the Cher’:

the vulgar, ragged-trousered-but-heart-of-gold voice who plays Cockney servants, shop assistants, henpecked husbands, and, if I remember rightly, who played the New Zealander pulling a rickshaw for the Jap conqueror who had conquered because the New Zealander hadn't bought enough war bonds (1942 yintage): and the female voice with the Ruritanian accent, the one who usually betrays the villain by falling so hopelessly in love with the hero that she just can’t shoot him when she gets the chance. One could wish that there were a greater variety of voices, but it must be admitted that the NZBS is in a difficult position. The BBC has a choice of hundreds of actors who can do radio work as well as appearing on the stage. In New Zealand there is no stage except repertory, and the solution is not there. So, until we have a population of eight millions, and a living professional stage, I suppose we shall welcome; again and again, our old friends the voices.