Dark Drama

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 633, 17 August 1951, Page 11

Dark Drama

HAVE always had a predilection for poetic drama over the air, but lately whenever I have voiced this opinion among a circle of my acquaintances there has been a significant pause, followed by "Did you hear that thing, The Dark Island?" I say No, eyebrows are significantly raised, and the conversation slinks into other channels. Last Wednesday I heard The Dark Island and enjoyed every minute of it, all sixty of them, for: reasons which were sufficient though perhaps not always good. To be sure, in the beginning the emotional colour was laid on a little thick, and it was difficult to tell, amid the bursts of sustained and_ significant music, whether one was listening to a tone poem garnished with verbal felicities in the 2YA tradition, or narrative laced with diminished sevenths. But once the narrative had swung into its stride and the music was relegated to what I feel is. its primary function, even in radio drama-the making of emotional bridges-the play gripped me completely. When, once the sad drama of Caractacus and Claudius ("that nagging

SS cripple with a book-lined head") had been played out I should have liked the play to finish. But the Druids, invoked at the play’s beginning and scarcely mentioned since, had yet to be placated, and it took a few more deepenings of the Celtic twilight before darkness was finally permitted to de

scend.

M.

B.