THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 506, 4 March 1949, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

By Request As from Monday, March 7, at 8.0 p.m., 2YA will-replace the Freddie Gore | Show with a new request session featuring Marion Waite, Stan Dorward and his Sextet with Briton Chadwick announcing. Requestfully Yours is a little _ different from most request sessions in that the requests will be broadcast direct from the studio. This should add /a welcome touch of spontaneity and sur- | prise which"is so hard to achieve in a | recorded request session. One will never know, as with a_ recorded number, / exactly how it will be interpreted. And the possibility of disappointment when /a record is "not available" and the com- | piler.guesses wrongly as to whether you would prefer a different number by Frankie or the requested number’ by Bing instead, should be safely eliminated. Women’s Cricket ALTHOUGH no female Sutcliffes have yet been discovered to charm the ranks of women cricket enthusiasts throughout the country, local players should give a good enough account of themselves when they meet the touring English Women’s Cricket Team this month. The five matches to be played will be well covered by both National and Commercial stations, starting with the game against a Canterbury eleven on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 8 and 9, on which Station 3YA will give progress reports every hour (on both days), and a scoreboard feport in a link of the main National stations at 6.40 p.m. and 9.0 p.m. Station 3ZB will give five-minute summaries in their Women’s session at 3.20 p.m. on each day. The games at Dunedin (on March 12 and 14), Wellington (on March 18 and 19), and Auckland (on March 22 and 23), will be covered in the same way by the stations concerned, except that 4ZB will give its 3.20 summary on March 14 only, and 2ZB on March 18 only. The test match which will be played at Auckland on March 26, 28, and 29, will be covered by a complete running commentary from 1YA. The Mermaid’s Tail ISTENERS to the latest programme in the BBC series Picture Parade can hear how Glynis ,Johns acquired the mermaid’s tail that she wore to such effect in the amusing British film Miranda. It was designed for her, after a great deal of research and experiment, by the man who was responsible for the equipment of the British frogmen in the war, and the designer comes to the microphone to describe how he did it. In addition to Glynis Johns the stars of | the film who are heard in excerpts from the sound-track are Griffith Jones, Googie Withers, John McCallum, and Margaret Rutherford. This number of Picture Parade will be heard from 1YA at 2.0 p.m. on Sunday, March 13. Later numbers in the series include descriptions of the making of such films as Hamlet, Oliver Twist, The nee Boy, and The Red Shoes.

Mortgage for a Princess N authentic picture of life in the most northerly part of the British Islesthe Shetlands, lying out in the seas that divide Scotland from Norway-is presented in the BBC programme Shetland Crofter, which will be broadcast from station 4YZ at 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, March 13. Once the Shetlands were under Scandinavian rule, but in the 15th Century they passed over to Scotland as mortgage for the dowry of a Danish princess. To this day the dialect of the Shetlands is a mixture of the Old Norse and Scottish languages. Jenny Gilbertson, who wrote the script of this programme, aimed not so much at making a study of one particular Shetland crofter as of crofters everywhere in the Shetland Isles. She pieced together her picture from conversations at the fireside of Alec Henderson, a man who has lived for 70 years and more in the Shetlands, and who knows all there is to be known of that hard life where a man has to wrest his living from both the land and the sea.

Plays for Children [_- VERY so often the BBC Children’s Hour puts on one of the Toytown plays. It has been doing so for something like 20 years, and it is likely to go on doing so for some time to come, for young listeners in Britain just can’t have too much of them. S. G. Hulme Beaman, the creator of Toytown, died some years ago, but the 30 odd plays he wrote have

become gadio classics. Now some of them have been issued by the BBC Transcription Service so that children in other countries can share the fun with Larry the Lamb, Dennis the Daschund, Ernest the policeman, and all the other inhabitants of Toytown. Like all Children’s Hour productions, the Toytown plays are given a first-rate cast. In the first of the series for instance, which will be heard from 1YA at 5.0 p.m. on Saturday, March 12, Derek McCulloch plays Larry, Norman Shelley plays Dennis, and the well-known stage and radio actress Mary O'Farrell plays, Mrs. Goose. The title of this first play is The Disgraceful Business at Mrs. Goose’s.

Village Band Now that the sound and fury of the annual brass band contest has died down, listeners who tune into the BBC programme Village Band will be able to hear the story of the struggles and triumphs of a brass band in another community noted for its band musicPantbach village in Wales. Although Pantbach doesn’t really exist, it is typical of scores of Welsh villages where music means a great deal to the people, and where the pride of the community is the village band. And in this programme about the Pantbach band there is drama as well as music to be heard, for it tells of such things as the triumphant concerts under a lamp-post outside Davies the Corner Shop following a win at the local competitions, the epic struggle of Sam Howells the Cornet to conquer the handicap of his new false teeth, and the bitter feud with the neighbouring Llanfechan Silver Prize Band. Village Band will be heard from 3YA at 10.0 p.m. on Sunday, March 13. Queer Goings On "| WO men met in a railway carriage. They had never seen, each other before, and they never met again, but fate bound their lives together from that moment. How it all came about listeners can hear in The End of the Play, a programme in the BBC’s Mystery Playhouse series which will be broadcast from 2YA at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 9. Another BBC thriller included in the week’s programmes "describes how a man on trial for murder offers to prove that he is, in fact, his own supposed victim. This novel venture into the macabre is called The Strange Case of Alexander Forden, and was written by Emerton Court. The recorded version, which will be heard from 4YA this Saturday, March 5, at 7.30 p.m., is acted by a strong cast from the BBC’s Drama Repertory Company,