Supercharged

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 469, 18 June 1948, Page 11

Supercharged

(NE of the most "intense" programmes to which I have ever listened came from 4YA, in the series of BBC productions Whom the Gods Love. These dramatizations deal with those of the famous who, fortunate or unfortunate, died in the glory of youth and achievement. I had already heard similar programmes dealing with the young Pitt, and Wolfe, the hero of Quebec. Both of these were sober productions befitting the histories of politician and soldier, the events of their lives providing excitement enough without any extra help from the radio dramas. I wasn’t prepared for the atmosphere of the programme on Shelley, although I might have anticipated that such a

hero would demand a different technique of approach. The programme took as its starting-point in time the hours spent in waiting by the poet’s wife Mary and friend Jane, in the Italian villa where the realisation came that he would never return alive. Obviously Shelley’s tragic end, the sailing away, the storm, the romantic Italian scene, and the rest of the factual surroundings were enough to lend involuntary emotion even to a prosaic account of what happened, But when the emotional atmosphere is supercharged by every device in the literary power of a good radio writer, it is difficult not to feel that the programme has overbalanced and fallen into hysteria. The natural emotion of the two women was artifici-. ally heightened by the use of an Italian fiesta as background music, accompanied by such premonitions and fears that an already tense performance seemed unbearably passionate. In the flashback technique, used for filling in details of the poet’s life, there lurked a certain false emphasis, too, on the subject of death by drowning, premonitions of Shelley’s end being suggested rather too often. I should have enjoyed "Percy Bysshe Shelley" a little more without so much tearing of my feelings to tatters, but I must admit that it was an exceptional presentation of an exceptional subject, and an exceptionally good programme in spite of the emotion. |