THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 484, 1 October 1948, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Dr. Johnson and Co. INFORTUNATELY for us, in Dr. Johnson’s day there was no gramophone and no radio and therefore we lack any vocal record of thé lexicographer’s conversational ability, but Michael Innes has given his idea of what we might have heard. His script was originally broadcast in the BBC Third Programme _ series Imaginary Conversations, and a transcription will be heard from 1YA at 7.55 p.m. on Monday, October 4. It concerns the meeting of Johnson and Boswell, in the course of a tour of Scotland, wath the eccentric. Lord Monboddo, As tie title of the programme, "Strange Intelligence" would indicate, the setting is in Macbeth country and, as the programme opens, it is of incidents from Macbeth that Boswell and Johnson talk on their way to see Lord Monboddo. Arthur Young takes the part of Johnson, John Laurie that of Lord Monboddo, and Duncan McIntyre plays Boswell. The narrator is Julian Orde and the producer Rayner Heppenstall. Sadler and His Wells CADLER’S Wells, the home,of opera and ballet in England, and’to which some aspiring young New Zealanders have gone for tuition-at various times, has a picturesque history. In 1683 a man named Sadler rediscovered there a well with curative properties, and opened a spa. As the years went by, Sadler’s Wells spa became more and more an entertainment centre. It has had many vicissitudes in its two-and-a-half centuries of existence, but to-day the prestige of the theatre stands higher than ever. The history and music contained in its story was originally broadcast by the BBC in its Light Programme, and on Monday, October 4, at 7.30 p.m., listeners to 4YA will hear a BBC recording called The Story of Sadler’s Wells, with Victoria Sladden and’ James Johnston as the singers and the BBC Theatre Ofchestra conducted by Clifton Helliwell. New Radio Detective PHILIP ODELL, a_- smooth-voiced Canadian who appears in the-new BBC serial Lady in a Fog, is a radio detective with a_ difference. He is no master-mind, but a human and credible sort of person, interested in people, and with an instinctive understanding of their foibles and motives. He makes mistakes in a human way, and puzzles out the solution of a problem much as anyone would. Sometimes he is frankly out of his depth, and as he takes his audience into his confidence all the time, everyone has a good chance of arriving at the correct solution as soon as he does. There are plenty of thrills and action in Lady in a Fog, and it is well spiced with humour. From the time Odell meets a mysterious lady in a mink on a foggy day in London he gets mixed up with as much intrigue and violence as the most exact--ing connoisseur of excitement could desire. Odell is played by Robert Beatty (whose photo appears on page 21), and the serial is produced by the BBC's ace producer of thrillers, Martyn C.

ja ° Webster. Lady in a Fog starts from 4YZ at 9.30 p.m. on Monday, Octo‘ber 4. Mock Turtle, Hatter and Hare | EwIis CARROLL’S fantasies brought to’ life-that is what listeners to 3YZ’s Children’s Hour will enjoy soon when they tune in to the BBC serialised version of Alice in Wonderland, which starts at 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 5. The narration is spoken

by Derek McCulloch ("Uncle Mac"), Head of the BBC’s Children’s Hour, while some of the best artists in British radio have been employed to bring the inventive mathematician’s immortal characters to the air. Alice herself is played by a 15-year-old named Angela Glynne, and her strange adventures with the Duchess and the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, the King and Queen of Hearts and the Mock Turtle. are reproduced in this version with a vividness and truth to the original that has to be heard to be believed. In the Tower HUNDRED years after Julius "" Caesar said Veni Vidi Vici, or whatever it was, as he landed on: British soil, a Roman Centurion was lowering by rope from an old London" watch tower the beautiful Saxon maid Alfredo. He was trying to save her from the wrath of the. Roman citizens as Boadicea stormed the fort. This is the first episode in the serial Tower of London, which shows how the famous tower has played its part in the history of Britain, from the time when it was a small Roman fortress until the days of .Norman Baillie-Stewart, the Seaforth Highlander subaltern who sold secrets to the- Germans and was imprisoned there as the "Officer in the Tower." The capture of London by Alfred the Great, the coming of William the Conqueror, the stories of William Rufus, Robert of Normandy, Henry I and William de Mandeville, are all included in this romantic Gothic tale of past intrigues in Higher Places. Tower of London starts from 1YD at 7.30 p.m. on’ Thursday, October 7. Bach’s Mass in B Minor NE of the major musical events of this year was the performance in the Christchurch Cathedral last April of the Bach Mass in B Minor, in which the Christchurch Harmonic Society, the National Orchestra of the NZBS and the visiting English soprano Isobel Baillie, took part. The Harmonic

Society, at the invitation of the Otago branch of the Society of Musicians, has now completed arrangements to take 160 of its members to Dunedin to present the Mass in the Town Hall on Saturday, October 9, as a gesture from Christchurch to the Dunedin Centennial. The soloists will be Dora Drake (soprano), Mary Pratt (contralto), Thomas E. West (tenor) and Bryan Drake (bass). Associated with the conductor of the Christchurch Harmonic Society (Victor C. Peters) will be Dr. V. E. Galway at the Grand Organ, and Maurice Till at the piano. The performance will be rebroadcast from 8.0 p-m. onwards by Station 4YA. Under the Big Top T ORD GEORGE SANGER (the ~ famous English circus proprietor) was ,no more a lord than Buffalo Bill (of Wild West renawn) was the Honourable William Cody. During an action at law between the two. Cody

adopted the honorific. George won his case and, with impish humour, elevated himself to nobility. It was 1845 that the two Sangers, George and John, started a conjuringy exhibition at Birmingham. ‘The

venture was successful and _ the brothers, who had _ been interested spectators of equestrian performances at Astley’s amphitheatre, London, then started a touring show of their own. Eventually they became lessees of the London Agricultural Hall, where they produced a large number of elaborate spectacles. Later they leased Astley’s, where they gave equestrian pantomimes in the winter and toured in the summer with a large circus. Roy Plomley, a BBC playwright, has written the life story of George, calling it Lord George Sanger. Listeners to 4YA at 9.22 p.m. on Sunday, "October 10, will hear the story as produced by the NZBS.