Tell Us, Mr. X...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 10

Tell Us, Mr. X...

HE art of radio interviewing seems to me to depend largely on asking the right questions in the right pauses and of filling in smoothly when the subject proves inarticulate. It is equally embarrassing to hear an interviewer fumbling for a question and an interviewee yammering and stammering. A tfecent 1YA interview of Richard Farrell by Eric Waters disclosed little save that both would have felt happier playing the piano. On the other hand, Cynthia Dale, interviewing Max Oldaker, of the Gilbert and Sullivan Company, judiciously gave him his head, merely jerking the reins occasionally. With an enthusiasm, rare among visiting actors, for productions other than those he had appeared in, Mr. Oldaker gave us much .shrewd comment on the contemporary theatre. He discussed Ivor Novello’s work, contrasted the sterility of the contemporary British musical with the vitality of the American type, analysed John Gielgud in The Lady’s Not for Burning, Edith Evans in The Cherry Orchatd, and Cyril Ritchard in The Relapse, and gave a diverting description of Dali’s décor for Strauss’s Salome. sThe tactful close to this brightly informative session contained a neat and unsolicited compliment to a Dunedin amateur production of The Linden Tree.