Play with a Past

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 418, 27 June 1947, Page 12

Play with a Past

HE late Victorian edifice, so solid« seeming to its inmates, now shows many a gaping hole where a 20th Century finger of scorn has been poked ’in to point the fact that it was jerry-built. Late Victorian dramatists (if we exclude those who lived on long enough into a succeeding era to prove their solidity and solidarity) have shated the fate of the building, and now Pinero, T. W. Robertson, and Henry Arthur Jones are merely names to conjure the big money out of quiz-sponsors’ pockets. Thus it was something of a surprisé to read in the programmes that a scené from Henry Arthur Jones’s Mrs. Dane’s Detence (continued on next page) _ -_

‘(continued from previous page) would be presented from 2YA ‘last Sunday afternoon. And very well presented it was, too, with Robert Newman as browbeating counsel (nice change to have the interview in a mere office) and Beryl MacMillan as the browbeaten Woman with a Past. I feel that Mrs. Dane’s past will be a bit passe by now, but so cryptic was the single ten-minute scene that I simply must go back to the original (it will mean a visit to the Library stackroom, to find out what it was all about. Did the NZBS assume us to be betterread than we are, or was it their deliberate intention to drive us headlong into the pursuit of knowledge?