Murder is Out

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 488, 29 October 1948, Page 9

Murder is Out

COMMEND The Diary of William Carpenter to any listener in search of an authentic thriller. In fact, it is as nice a. little piece of gristly horror as you will find in a month’s radio programmes, It is expertly acted and produced, and credit must go to the BBC for turning out anything so tense, so spine-chilling, and so really nasty.

But it is, in more ways than one, a nasty play. It concerns a house where a brutal murder was done, and the mental and spiritual effect of this happening on later occupants of the place. These’ occupants are in themselves samples of nastiness also. That they would have desired to do away with each other, even without the atmospheric goading of a departed murderer’s spirit, is obvious almost from the start of the play; and the presence of two potential criminals in a haunted house does not make for any ray of light in the murk of psychological horror here portrayed. The use of murder as a subject for radio plays has become a commonplace, and F with others must shudder when, as often happens, it becomes a theme for comedy treatment; but to place the emphasis entirely on the macabre side of it is a fault in the opposite direction. In my opinion the only way to treat murdér is in a matter of fact "crime-does’nt-pay" manner, without making capital of its grimmer details, Isn’t it about time, though, that murder as a subject for radio plays was shelved in favour of something more rewarding, from the point of view of actors, producers and listeners, all of whom, surely, must be getting a little tired of it by this time?