Between Two Stools

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 458, 2 April 1948, Page 8

Between Two Stools

FROM time to time I listen to Radio Playhouse from 4ZB, but it seldom attains to more than a mediocre standard. I attribute this to the selection of plays, most of which are of not more than passing interest. With better material, the people who act in these plays could give us something really good; as, it is, they are working usually with material which gives them little scope for showing us what they are made of. The opposite is the fault with Playhouse of Favourites, where the material is vastly superior to the means of production. Full-length plays by recognised dramatists, as well as full-length novels by recognised authors, are ruthlessly cut to half-hour pattern. A Doll’s House, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, and so on, treated in this‘ fashion leave the listener with an exasperated feeling of combined surfeit and hunger. The problem is whether it is better to havé a poor play which was especially written for half-hour presentation, or a good play which has been cut for the purpose. There is no solution as far as the ZB’s are concerned, for the rigid conventions of advertising seem to forbid the extension of any session to more than half-an-hour. Nor have the YA’s yet graduated to the stage where they are willing to try their listeners out

with an unabridged evening’s performance of a full-length play. Here the compromise of the recent BBC series World Theatre was successful, but as yet nothing as good has replaced them,