MEN OF GOD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 431, 26 September 1947, Page 18

MEN OF GOD

BBC Religious Plays IX plays, marking the first S attempt in radio-to present the individual stories of the ‘Old Testament prophets in a connected and intelligible sequence, will shortly be heard from Station 2YA. Seton Pollock and Wilfrid Grantham, who devised and wrote the series (which has been recorded by the BBC Transcription Service from the original broadcast), set themselves to re-create the story of the Hebrew prophets from its beginnings among the mists of early history to its climax in the coming of Christianity. Among the problems which had to be solved to achieve their aim the authors were confronted with the necessity for devising a style which, without being consciously archaic or aggressively modern, would biend perfectly with the fine language of the Old Testament oracles while, at the same time, revealing the sharp relevance of the prophetic insight to the problems of to-day. "Creative Inspiration" It was not enough to write six plays about six great,men. Though each script can stand entirely by itself, the authors sought to give continuity to the whole series by providing a fixed observation point from which the listener could watch the march of events through the centuries. The use of the enigmatical personality of John the Baptist as this link (described by one London critic as a "creative inspiration") transforms the sequence of episodes into one drama. As play succzeds play, the personality of John steadily takes shape, his spiritual development serving as a mirror to the development of the prophetic drama itself. And in the last play, John steps. forward to )\dominate the stage and to gather into one pattern the strands of the five earlier plays. Some may wonder what use it is to bring before the public a work dealing with men who lived so long ago. All of them (except John) lived long before Socrates and two of them were elive when Rome was founded. But the chief effect of the series on the listener is (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) to startle him into realising that the most urgent problems of modern times are precisely the problems with which these men of old were wrestling. Sometimes the parallel between the events of those days and events of to-day is so obvious that it may almost seem that the authors made it all up to give their drama a modern twist. Maurice Jacobson was called in at an early stage to provide the musical setting of the plays. His work is planned on an almost symphonic scale which supports and illuminates the themes with which the plays deal. Seton Pollock has been interested in the Hebrew prophets since he was a child and, some years before the war, started to write a book about them, He ‘resumed his work on the subject in his leisure time during the war, in whfth he served in the R.A.F. Believing that the oracles were meant to be heard rather than read, he experimented with some radio scripts. These interested the BBC and he was put in touch with Grantham, Wilfrid Grantham is a producer in the drama department of the BBC and spends much of his time writing scripts, mainly about religious subjects. He has also written stage plays. He was an officer in the Regular Army during the 1914-1918 war, at the end of which he resigned his commission to study ~music and singing, and then went on the stage. The present series of plays, recorded under the title Men of God, will starb at 2YA on Sunday, October 5, at 9.32 p.m.. and will be heard on the first Sunday of each month. The series will be broadcast on the second eaneey of each month from 3YA, _ beginning November 9; on the third from 1YA (beginning on October 19), and on the fourth Sunday from 4YA (beginning on October 26). The plays, in the order in which they will be presented, are’ Elijah, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist.