Voice Under the Wind

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 668, 24 April 1952, Page 10

Voice Under the Wind

PART from the fact that 20 minutes of poetry reading by one person is too much, the 3YC session given by John Gielgud forces one to make distinctions which actors do not always make in the interpretation "of verse. Although it may seem strange to 8uggest that an actor may not be able to adapt himself to different emotional forms, it is none the less true. When a man surcharges the slightest things, as for example W. H. Davies’s "Leisure," with a quiver which: should be reserved for the starkest soliloquies, then the listener must either squirm in his chair or give some expression to his feelings. Perhaps because I like Shelley’s "Ode to the West Wind," this is the poem in which John Gielgud gives me most offence, and after hearing him read it I.usually stage a little rehearsal on my own account in order to put back into place that which has been so deliberately set aside. For me the poem sweeps and cries with the wind, and Shelley’s cries move with it, but when John Gielgud reads it the wind flags to a standstill beneath the weight of an teggpropriate personal anguish, ;