THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 441, 5 December 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Bunyan’s’ Progress V HEN Bunyan, the repentant, wrote his pious allegory, he could not have dreamed that one day it would be translated into over 128 ‘languages and dialects-if any such thought’ had occurred to him he would have rejected it as a temptation to spiritual pride. Yet there was a time not so long ago when a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress was as familiar an object on the parlour table as the family Bible. If that day is past, Bunyan himself should be the last person to be blamed, for his story of Christian’s journey towards the Delectable Mountains and the Celestial City, and of his struggles with Giant Despair and Apollyon, is still as exciting to read as ever. Now the BBC has dramatized this great story as a fourpart serial, and the first episode will be broadcast from 2YN this Sunday, December 7, at 8.16 p.m. The programme was produced by May Jenkin, and the script is by Barbara Bower, who has linked together the dramatic episodes of this version with narrative that has been put into the mouth of John Bunyan himself. Woman Naval Surgeon ()LD traditions die hard, especially when they are naval ones, so that when Dr. Mary Bryson, a Wellington girl who completed her medical degree at Edinburgh during the war, asked to be appointed to the Royal Navy, it was politely suggested to her that perhaps she would rather join the Army, or even the Air Force. But she’ had set her heart on it and eventually obtained a post as .Surgeon-lieutenant at the Royal Naval Barracks in Portsmouth, where there were over 2000 Wrens to look after. .In a talk recorded under the title, "A Woman Surgeon-Lieuten-ant in the Royal Navy" (to be heard from 2YA at 10.25 a.m. on Monday, December 8), Dr. Bryson tells us that her duties turned out to be lighter than she expected, for "the Wrens as a whole were a very healthy crowd of girls." Consequently, she was able to spend quite a lot of time seeing the Navy from the inside and _ getting acquainted with the ward-rooms .of the various warships that visited Portsmouth in those days. Inside Britain HEN Norman Corwin toured the world last year his observations contained much that was of a political nature. But a more detached and painstaking American observer named Joel O’Brieny was at about the same time travelling through Great Britain trying to find out just’ how that country: and its people were adjusting themselves to the change-over from wartime conditions to peace. What he saw and heard went into four feature programpes produced by the BBC under the title An American in Britain. On the first lap of his journey O’Brien (who is an ex-naval man) set out from London by car for the South and West. where he visited places like Brighton, Winchester, and Plymouth, and eventually ended up

among the coalmines and steelworks of South Wales. The next stage was from Oxford up through the Cotswolds and the industrialised areas around Birmingham and Manchester to the Lakes district. Finally, after spending some time in Scotland, he went down through the woollen manufacturing districts of Yorkshire back to London. The story: of his observations (spoken by the actor Douglass Montgomery) is_ told against a background of comment and criticism from the various people he encountered on the way. The first episode of An American in Britain will be heard from 2YA at 7.46 = on Wednesday, December 10.

Voluptuous Opera QNE of the leading exponents of what has been called the "voluptuous school" of opera was the 19th Century French composer Massenet, . whose Manon, a three-act opera based on the novel Manon Lescaut, by Prevost, will be heard from 2YA at 8.5 p.m. on Sunday, December 14. Manon is probably

one of the most popular operas ever written, though it owes this popularity less to dramatic quality than to its delicate sentimentality and the atmosphere of discreet voluptuousness in which the composer has wrapped the story of the young lovers Manon and Des Grieux. Technically, this work made new dramatic use of the Wagnerian Jeitmotiv or recurrent theme, and replaced the old recitative by dialogue spoken over a subdued orchestral accompaniment; but although’ there are some very catchy melodies, its music is generally lacking in character and originality. "Massenet was not a_ great composer,’ Oscar Thompson says, "but it is likely that Manon will outlive many a work of more pretentious nature, because it possesses the potent quality of charm."

Ghostly ‘Visitation | ISTENERS who enjoyed the series Mystery and Imagination" and who have a taste for the supernatural in fiction should be interested to hear the most recent variation on this theme, a version of the H. G. Wells’s story The Late Mr. Elvesham. This tale is built round the idea of a dead man’s personality taking possession of another (living) person’s body-a favourite theme for writers with a leaning towards the macabre-and in it Wells has succeeded in producing a classic example of ghostly

visitatiorl. His masterly plot and the uncanny atmosphere with which he surrounded it make excellent material for radio, and the BBC adaptation of the story (by Anthony Knowles) is guaranteed to make the most phlegmatic of us feel those unmistakable prickings at the nape of the neck as we sit forward on the edges of our armchairs. The Late Mr. Elvesham will be heard from 1YA at 10.15 p.m. on Sees nit December 8, * Help from Psychology HE use of psycho-analysis to solve problems of neurosis and maladjust-ment-due to the war or other causes -has been discussed extensively in current literature and exploited on the stage and the films. Now radio has come forward with an authoritative account of how psychologists can help ordinary people to straighten out their personal problems and worries. To get authentic material, the BBG called in Professor Cyril Burt, of London University, one of Britain’s foremost psychologists and educationists, to produce a series that they have called The Human Mind, and the outcome was three feature programmes of quite absorbing interest, with each dramatic episode based on actual facts. Phe first of the series, "The Psychologist’s Laboratory," will be broadcast from 1YA at 9.43 p.m. on Wednesday, December 10. It describes the methods used by psychologists in their study of the human mind, and its reactions inedifferent circumstances. The two following programmes are "Psychiatry," which deals with a typical example of anxiety neurosis, and "The Young Delinquent," which shows how successfully psychology has been applied to the problems of childhood.