Bridging the Gulf

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 477, 13 August 1948, Page 19

Bridging the Gulf

NE of the hardest gaps to bridge, in the arranging of radio programmes, must be the gap between the lowest brow and the highest. In between the corny popular song-hits and the intellectuality of Bach’s greatest works there exists a chasm which not all the nondescript refuse of mediocre composers, not all the appealing minor classics nor the best modern jazz can hope to fill. So, too, in between Shakespeare and soapopera exists a similar chasm, and ‘the endeavour to bridge it with plays that are neither boring nor cheap must be a programme-arranger’s continual nightmare. Every week some play appears ‘which seeks to appeal to that vast unseen audience which doesn’t understand Ibsen and yet has had enough of the Lone Ranger and his kind. Most of these "in-between" dramas, once heard, sink into the oblivion which they court. Occasionally, however, one or two are

RADIO VIEWSREEL (Cont’d.)

so much better than the average "light drama" that they deserve to be kept on record and to reappear, after a suitable interval, for the amusement of those who haven’t as yet heard them. In this class I might place The Lady From Abroad, by Mabel Constanduros and Howard Agg, of which the NZBS unit has made a fast-moving and successful production. Obviously designed with no other ambition on the part of the author than a desire to amuse, it succeeds in its object far better than many more pretentious plays; yet being put together with a due regard for construction, timing, and. characterisation, it has merits which raise it well above the average play used for filling up the wide and deep chasm abovementioned.