Dated Dinner
AUFMAN and Ferber’s Dinner at Eight (in 2YA’s Friday night Radio Theatre) represents almost our last taste of circenses before the NZBS brings on the bread of the new World Theatre series. And about time, too, many of us will shout, weary of the stereotyped situations and artificial posturings which is all the performers have had to offer us. Yet I have a lingering affection for that period piece Dinner at Eight, for it has wit and it has drama. On the other hand, it no longer has immediacy, since that era when millionaires went broke overnight without the inconvenience of having to cut down their tobacco consumption or give notice to the butler is now no more. The play is also redolent with memories of the film version, and behind the intonations of the radio performers we hear the ghostly promptings of Marie Dressler or Jean Harlow. This faint flavour of an irrecoverable past gives to Dinner at Eight a distinction it does not intrinsically possess.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470905.2.22.1
Bibliographic details
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 428, 5 September 1947, Page 10
Word count
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169Dated Dinner New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 428, 5 September 1947, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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