All in the Name

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 441, 5 December 1947, Page 11

All in the Name

T is not often that the title of an unknown play by an unknown author makes an immediate appeal. The Angel and the Aspidistra, broadcast recently from 3YA, sounded promising; I found myself compelled to listen with a view to finding out what connection, if any, there was between the Angel, the Aspidistra, and the usual run of radio plays. I was-inevitably, I suppose-disap-pointed. It may be true that good plays have been spoilt by bad titles, but it is even more true that a good title can be spoilt by having a bad play attached to it. This was not a good play. The theme was murder. The Aspidistra served as a parking place for the poison bottle -and, of course, as a Symbol. But the function of the Angel is still not quite clear-unless it served to make everything come out all right in the end. And this was undoubtedly the case. The murderer dies in the odour of sanctity, having atoned for his crime by being killed in a bombing raid and winning the George Cross. (It is so Nasty to have a Murder in the Family.) This of course make everything all right; the rest of the family breathe a sigh of relief, and place the skeleton (duly crowned with laurel) back in the ancestral cupboard, unsmirched. "r

_- notes are not written by the staff of "The Listener’ or by «any member of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service. They are independent _ comments for which "The Listener" pays outside coritributors.