Those Sealskin Trousers
SUPPOSE it is illogical to demand of a radio play less talk and more action, but I felt ensnared in verbiage when listening to a re-play of Eric Linklater’s Sealskin Trousers, partly perhaps because this is another of those plays wherein the beautifully chiselled phrase is forced to contend against the roar of the surf and sundry other studio effects. Baldly speaking, the story is a vice versa version of the Forsaken Merman, for the beautiful but short-sighted Elizabeth leaves her pedestrian lover to become the bride (or worse) of ene of the sealmen. Now if the sealman had been a simple-hearted one-cylinder-brain type like Tarzan this would have been understandable, but with his physical perfection goes a tendency to talk about glands and the Primordial Initiative. Elizabeth in her intenser moments sounded exactly like Hotchkiss, so that one expected her to say "Oh Thomas" instead of "Oh Roger" at any moment. And I thought it positively sadistic of the author: to leave his hero (the groundling) shrieking his desolation from the cNff top, when it would have been so much more comfortable for ‘both hero and listeners if he could have been got back-to the mental hospital in which the action
(such as it was) began.
M
B.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 549, 30 December 1949, Page 9
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212Those Sealskin Trousers New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 549, 30 December 1949, Page 9
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