Maugham Play for the ZB's

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 524, 8 July 1949, Page 13

Maugham Play for the ZB's

At the ripe age of 70 years, novelists are usually past their prime, but Somerset Maugham, now 75, wrote The Razor’s Edge in 1914, and it became, along with Of Human Bondage, and The Moon and Sixpence, one of his three major novels. Hollywood paid a large sum for the film rights and the novel was produced as a screen play. Now The Razor’s Edge has been adapted for radio in Australia and will be heard from the ZB stations on Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting at 1ZB on July 14, 2ZB on July 28, 3ZB.on August 11, and 4ZB on August 25. e Maugham’s hero is Larry Darrel, a Chicago boy, who returns from war bitter and disillusioned. He is unwilling to go to college, unwilling to settle down and marry the wealthy Isabel Bradley -indifferent even to the Parisian fleshpots offered him by Isabel’s expatriate uncle Elliott. He wanders through Europe, picking up saints and sinners, already feeling that "the sharp edge of the razor is difficult to pass over... the path to salvation is hard." Each time he reappears among his friends, he is a little more remote and baffling.

Ultimately he reaches India and there finds what he has been seeking. He returns to the States with faith in the Absolute, a humble belief in selflessness and the life of the spirit. One of Maugham’s favourite characters is the suave expatriate, who dictates from his deathbed: "Mr. Elliott Templeton regrets that he cannot accept Princess Noyemali’s kind invitation owing to a previous engagement with his Blessed Lord." Another is Suzanne Rouvier, a j middle-class courtesan befriended by Larry, whose amiable moral outlook and shtewd achievement of espectability are vintage France and vintage Maugham. Maugham himself appears in the book emitting characteristically worldly wisecracks. The producer is E. Mason Wood and the adaptation for radio is by Richard Lane. The cast of characters is: Larry Darrel (Leonard Thiele), Elliott. Templeton (John Cazabon), W. Somerset Maugham (Kevin Brennan), Gray Maturin (Lloyd Berrell), Sophie McDonald (Lyndall Barbour), and Isabel Bradley (Dinah Shearing).