BULLETS IN THE BALLET
CTORS are notoriotsly temperamental people, and as Ngaio Marsh and many another writer of detective stories has perceived, a nice big echoing theatre is a wonderful place for a murder. All sorts of alarming visions can be conjured up of bodies whisked into the flies or rolled up in the back-drops, | of live cartridges substituted for blanks in the property pistol, or of unbuttoned rapiers doing dire carnage in the stage duel. But the idea behind The Show Must Go On, the latest BBC serial thriller which starts from 2YA at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 29, ix better than this. The story deals with a newlyformed theatrical company who are rehearsing musical comedy in a haunted theatre. Mixed up with the music, bright singing, and drama of the play itself is a series of mysterious murders that the cast get involved in. Queer bumps and knockings through the walls, eerie voices coming apparently from
nowhere, or bodies appearing suddenly in the middle of a passionate aria, are not the best aids to getting on with the show, but somehow or other (and with a gradually diminishing cast)- the production carries on. What the actors and
singers don’t know, and what listeners don’t know either until the last episode, is that the embalmed body of a oncefamous Shakespearean actor is sealed up in a secret room. Yet the mystery isn’t as simple as all that, and there are many other queer goings-on in this_ unusual musical thriller. The leading role is played by John Bentley, a protege of that BBC producer who specialises in the macabre, Martyn C. Webster, Zi
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 522, 24 June 1949, Page 19
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274BULLETS IN THE BALLET New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 522, 24 June 1949, Page 19
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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