Ghost or Grandmother?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 404, 21 March 1947, Page 12

Ghost or Grandmother?

T all hinges on whether Phoebe Hessel was a real person, If she is, then the play in which she appears may be mysterious, but is not imaginative; if she isn't, then it may be imaginative but is hardly mysterious. So in either case The Church by the Sea is scarcely qualified to appear under the generic heading of "Mystery and Imagination." I have so far listened to two of these (the other Lord Dunsany’s Golden Dragon City) and have decided, perhaps on insufficient evidence but evidence that is likely to remain insufficient, that the salient feature of this 2YA Friday night series is the fect that it gets nowhere. The Church by the Sea concerns a young man and young woman of the early 1800’s who talk with a mysterious old lady on a church’ porch. Later they come to the conclusion (definitely on insufficient evidence) that the mysterious lady is Phoebe Hessel, who died recently at the age of 104, after a life of unprecedented adventure for a female. But though you would expect drops of quintessence of human experience to fall from her lips she contents herself with safe generalisations, such as that bankers are vety useful people or that nowadays things are made too easy for the young folks, all in a voice very like Ethel Barrymore's.

It needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this--we can hear it any night of the week from our own elders. But I do not feel inclined to condemn The Church by the Sea in its entirety. I merely suggest expanding the love interest, introducing an element of conflict which Phoebe Hessel (ghost or grandmother) will be instrumental in dispelling, dividing it into 12 equal parts, and serving Mondays to Fridays in the morning session,