In Mellow Mood

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 470, 25 June 1948, Page 8

In Mellow Mood

beter as beauty is in the eye of the beholder so radio entertainment is in the ear of the listener, and the programme selector’s task is further complicated by the fact that even the individual ear is not consistent in its likes and dislikes. Sunday evening’s 2ZB programme found in me the _ ideal listener, me'lowed by almost 48 hours of high living and no thinking; and even the Citizen’s Forum, discussing Education for Leisure, failed to tickle to wakefulness my dormant critical faculty. ‘Then came Noel Coward’s distilled accents to drip honeyed balm. I was thus a ready target for the Radio Playhouse dramatisation of Enoch Arden, and in no mood to head a resistance movement against its considerable emotional impact. Such in fact was the melancholy induced in me by the

tale (after all, there have been authentic modern versions of it) that I allowed myself to be carried willy-nilly well into the next programme, and found myself Among the Immortals, though I had resolved to avoid their company. But the bright fustian of William Shakespeare was .a pleasant contrast to the watered silk (wet with wifely tears) of Enoch Arden, and the everyday shrewishness of Will’s Anne contrasted favourably with the melodious ululations of Enoch’s Annie. Shakespeare, moreover, was allowed the considerable privilege of occasionally supplying his own lines (Anne’s were cut-rate wholesale from a firm of dialogue-suppliers) whereas ill-starred Enoch seemed to be cut off entirely from intercourse with his Bard.