Noises On
BECAUSE radio script-writing requires a different technique from that of stage writing, many radio authors seem to fall over backwards in the attempt to avoid a straightforward piece of dialogue. Instead, we get a script so full of radio "effects" that there is.room for little else. Background music, thundering hooves, church-bells, seagulls and sounding surf, slamming doors, storms, and all the gasps, whispers, sobs, and groans of which the human voice is capable, are exploited to the full and then allowed to overflow, There are some plays, however, where similar devices are legitimately introduced and skilfully used to heighten the tension of the plot. I am thinking here of Mr. Todhunter, a play produced by the NZBS unit. In this play the story is told by a gossipy man on a train, and in order to introduce each necessary flash-back to the action-of the story proper, the author allows the train to plunge, momentarily, into a very radiogenic tunnel, This device was not overdone, but neatly introduced to heighten the tenseness of an increasingly tense plot. Altogether, this was one of the most effective of the NZBS productions,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 9
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190Noises On New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 9
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