Foreign Quota

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 444, 26 December 1947, Page 8

Foreign Quota

HE 4ZB Radio Theatre recently pre#, sented us with a play about parentsy divorce, and the effect of sdme upom the offspring of the marriage. In cas@ you should reply that this is nothing new, I hasten to agree-it has been done before, and done with more sin~ cerity; but in this case the child got the custody of the parents, which lend the play a modicum of originality. I is only in plays that children rise u in court and talk to the judge, a was done here; and it is only in play that the judge regards interruptio with respect, and bases his pronounc ments upon them. Anyhow, the child Jeannie asked for the house and parents, se

each of whom lived with her for th regulation six months; and, as you ca imagine, it wasn’t very long before th family was reunited, thanks to th daughter’s machinations, and the hel which she got from Above ("that suddl touch," was what she called it, whe praying). If it were all as simple a that, divorce statistics would soon sho a marked decline. After the play, th young actress who played the il spoke up, prompted by the announcer and explained about the rug-cutti parties she throws in order to keep teen agers out of mischief, with cokes crackers and "all the other things tha go to make a good time." It was al good, clean, wholesome, and pee but about as representative of the Ne Zealand Way of Life as an Eskim igloo. Whenever a play by one of out own writers is broadcast, I listen if I can and I have come to the conclusion tha almost any of our playwrights could, turn out a more representative eff than the above; the trouble is, I su pose, that there just aren’t enough Ne Zealand plays to go round.