THE GIFTS OF CHRISTMAS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 651, 21 December 1951, Page 7

THE GIFTS OF CHRISTMAS

HE people of the Commonwealth who so recently waited through anxious weeks for news of the health of the King will be a vast audience for his Christ--mas broadcast this year. As usual this will be preceded by a world-wide BBC programme, its subject The Gifts of Christmas, It is hoped to make links iri this programme between a fighting man in Korea and his home in Britain; a mother in a Displaced Persons’ camp in Germany and her children in Australia; the workers and citizens of Boys’ Town, Modena, ‘in Italy, and former prisoners of wat who were given help when escaping and have in turn helped the settlement, There will be visits to a Red Cross blood transfusion unit in Nairobi, and to Jamaica, ravaged not so long ago by a hurricane. It is planned to bring in the voices of Korean children singing at a Christmas party behind the firing line, in the hope that they will touch the conscience of the listening world. And, of course, with the other members of the Commonwealth New Zealand will make its contribution. Broadcast messages will be heard at Christmas from the Prime Minister (Mr, Holland) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Nash), and on New Year’s Eve listeners will have a message from the Governor-General, Lord Freyberg. Christmas Day; Messages from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition (YA, YZ, ZB stations, 1XH, 2ZA, 12.30 iy 40 Day: The Gifts of Christmas (2YA, 2.0 a.m.; YA and YZ stations, 9.4 a.m.). The King’s Broadcast (following The Gifts of Christmas broadcasts as above, and also from YA, YZ, ZB and X stations at 7.15 a.m., and YA and YZ stations at 12.30 and 6.45° p.m.). New Year’s Eve: The Governor-General’s Message (YA, YZ, ZB and X stations, and 2ZA, 7.0 p.m.). ETERNAL STORY AWN original nativity play, Emmanuel, in verse and poetic prose, is among the BBC’s new programmes for Christmas, 1951. James Forsyth, its author, describes it as a humble attempt to present the drama of the Birth of Christ as fully and as vividly as he is able. While making no effort to give a "slant of interpretation" to the eternal story, Forsyth ‘portrays Herod as a tragic, self-destroying ‘figure. He sees the Child’s fate in the hands of the people of Bethlehem; puts more wisdom into the words of the Shepherd: with his new-born lamb than all the utterances of the Three Wise Men; and he gives a speaking part to Mary. The author has said that he would like to remove the hope or presumption that the play is a direct contribution to either an old-fashioned faith or a new-fangled scepticism. It is another account of a sacred story. And he hopes that it may present some meaning and hold some loveliness both for people who know and celebrate the happy time of Santa Claus, with all its festivities, and the Christmas of the Church’s devotional celebration of the birth of its Saviour. Mervyn Johns is heard as the Shepherd, Peggy Bryan as Mary, John Laurie as Joseph, and Andrew Cruickshank as Herod. The Three Wise Men are played by Heron Carvic, Howieson

Culff and John Turnbull, The music, based upon oriental and antique themes, is composed and directed by Henry Boys, and Donald McWhinnie is producer, Monday, December 24, 3YC at 7.36 p.m.; Tuesday, December 25, 4YC at 7.30 p.m; Saturday, December 29, 2YC at 7.30 p.m. SNAPDRAGON & PUDDING HE BBC’s London Forum organisers claim that. their programmes contain the best brains and best talkers that can be found to discuss, informally, with wit and insight, problems of the day. New Zealand listeners are to have an opportunity of hearing what attitudes the brains and talkers, as represented by Sir Steuart Wilson, Compton Mackenzie and Professor C. E. M. Joad adopt towards the spirit of Christmas. Gilbert Harding is chairman. They will survey the season from the viewpoint of those who are no _ longer young (and who, incidentally, feel they can now spend Christmas as they wish and not in the way expected of them) and they go into it thoroughly. The spotlight is thrown on the traditional English Christmas-or is it the traditional Dickens Christmas?-~and in a discussion on Christmas fare it becomes apparent that Compton Mackenzie is @ purist. in snapdragon while Wilson and Joad differ violently’ on the constituents of Christmas pudding. Tuesday, December 25, 1YA at 3,0 p.m.; 4YZ at 1.30 p.m.; 3YC, 7.30 p.m. THEATRE ROYAL \V HEN Hugh Ross Williamson’s play, Queen Elizabeth was broadcast by the BBC early this year Stephen Williams wrote in the Radio Times that it was "to say the least, a gallant attempt at a full-length portrait of Elizabeth." Such a portrait can not have been easy to draw: in a play which takes about an hour and a half to broadcast. Yet the author has brought out well the violently opposed sides of. the queen’s personality, The play, which is to be broadcast in New Zealand on BBC transcriptions, deals with a single incident in Elizabeth’s life-her projected marriage with the Duke of Anjou, when she was forty-five and he twenty years

younger, It was Elizabeth’s last courtship, and the match was bitterly opposed by her people. Dame Edith Evans, one of the most famous figures on the contemporary English stage, whom some listeners will have seen in films-The Last Days of Dolwyn was one of them-plays the title role in Queen Elizabeth, and the supporting cast includes Laidman Browne as Lord Burleigh, Hugh Burden as the Baron de St. Marc, and Reginald Beckwith as Anjou. Happy and Glorious, another play in a group which the BBC has aptly called Theatre Royal, has been "built" from Laurence Housman’s collection of little plays about Queen Victoria. For many years the censorship ban on the representation of living or recently dead royalty kept the plays off the public stage in Britain, When the ban was lifted in the thirties they had an instant success with their tenderly witty treatment of the life and reign of Victoria. In Happy and Glorious the emphasis is upon Prince Albert and his relationship with the Queen, showing his gradual development from the diffident young Prince, a foreigner in a none-too-cordial England, to the wise counsellor who worked himself to death in the service of his adopted country. The Prince is played by Anton Walbrook and Queen Victoria by Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies. . Queen Elizabeth: 1YC, 9.30 p.m., Saturday. January 5. Happy and Glorious: 4YC, 7.33 p.m., Tuesday, January 8. TRADITIONAL FESTIVAL HEN ‘the world-famous Festival of Nine Lessons and = Carols, held every vear in Kine’s Collece Chanel.

Cambridge, was broadcast in the BBC Home Service last Christmas Eve (as has been the case for the last 21 years) a shortened form was recorded so that the choral part of the Service could be heard virtually in its entirety. The peculiarly’ moving quality of this traditional act of worship is due largely to the sheer beauty of the singing and the nature of the Festival itself; but also, partly, to the acoustics and associations of that Chapel. The Service includes. the Processional Hymn- Once in Royal David’s City; ‘and. old European carols such as Ding, Dong,, Ding, from Sweden, ‘and Hail

Blessed. Virgin Mary, from 17th Ce tury Italy. Basil Gray. describes. th scene both outside afid’ inside’ th Chapel, Mondey, December 24, 3¥C, at 10.0 p.m 1YC, at 10.2 p.m.; Tuesday, December 2 4YZ, at 9.30 a.m. HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF all the books that Charles Dicken wrote, none is better suited to radi dramatisation than A Tale of Tw Cities. In creating the character of Sid ney Carton in this well-known story o: the French Revolution (written in 1859 Dickens broke away from the fashio of the time, which was that a her should be noble and utterly devoid o faults. He made a man full of erro and therefore full of interest. Th author himself, an ardent actor, longe to play the role of Carton, but it wa not until long after his death in. 187 that a stage version of the book-ThA Only Way-brought fame as Carto to Sir John. Martin-Harvey. A the end of last year one of Britain’ leading playwrights, Terence Rattigan and an actor of the front rank, Joh Gielgud, dramatised the story and i was broadcast in the BBC Home Ser vice, with Eric Portman, well-kno actor of stage and screen as Carton and Belle Chrystall as Lucie Manette The producer was Cleland Finn. Monday, December 31, 3YC, at 7.32 p. PICK YOUR SCROOGE ICKENS’S Christmas Carol, eithe read or dramatised, has becom a tradition of Christmas listening This year the tradition will be con tinued, though with what is probabl a wider variety of Scrooges than eve before, Four different versions are t

be presented. The YA. stations will broadcast a BBC. version in which Scrooge is played by Alec Guinness, and there is a supporting cast of wellknown BBC voices. Guinness will be heard in the same role in a Towers of London production; though this time the cast will. imclude such J. Arthur Rank stars as John Mills, Googie Withers, Jean Simmons, Maerfe garet Lockwood, Dirk Bogarde and Derek Bond, This version will come from the ZBs and two. YZ stations. Listeners within reach of 1XH will be able to hear Lionel Barrymore’s Scrooge, while those who are able to tune into 2XA will find Ronald Colman. playing the same part. There should be a Scrooge, in fact, for every taste, Sunday, December 23, 2KA, at 6.30°p.m.; Monday, December | 24, 4YA; .10.0° p.m; Tuesday, December 25 LP ireg 5.0 "p.m; 1¥Z, 9.30 pm; 1XH, 2¥C, 8.15 p.m; 3YA, 4.0 p.m¥ yes 2.0 ‘p.m.; 4YZ, 11.0 a.m.; ZB cane and’ am 6.30 p-m.;. , December 26, 2YA,..1.0 "@