STRATFORD STAR BEGAN IN RADIO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 718, 17 April 1953, Page 6

STRATFORD STAR BEGAN IN RADIO

ARBARA JEFFORD, the talented 21-year-old who plays opposite Anthony Quayle in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre’s productions at present touring New Zealand, began: her acting career in Radio. Her first important engagement, she says, was in a Children’s Hour serial broadcast in the Western Regional service of the BBC.. She played the girl Ayacanora in a three-episode version of Westward Ho. Later she performed as "the good little wife" in a crime play entitled The Birdbath. She was then aged 16. Barbara’s ambition was the, legitimate theatre, but even after her broadcasting debut she did not appear on the stage. At 17 she performed in yet another medium-television. This was in a one-act play-part of a BBC variety series entitled The Under Twenties.

It was not till the young actress was 19 and had graduated with honours from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art that she appeared on the stage. It was her first Shakespearian role. She played Viola in Twelfth Night at a Brighton Repertory theatre. "It’s a part I'd like to play again," says Miss Jefford. "I might be able to do it properly a ee

now I know a little more about Shakespeare. The first year it’s always touch and go whether you do anything right." But Miss Jefford apparently did everything right, for in that year-while still only 19-she was selected for the part of Isabella in Measure for Measure, Opposite John Gielgud, at Stratford-on-Avon. Since then she has appeared mostly with the Shakespeare Memorial Company, but between times she has performed repeatedly on radio and television. She has been heard in New Zealand lately in the BBC dramatisation of The Mayor of Casterbridge (which begins at 2YZ Napier, at. 4.0 p.m. on Monday, ‘April 20), and also plays Helena in the World Theatre All’s Well That Ends Well (see page 15). When interviewed in Wellington, Barbara Jefford was able to give The Listener some interesting comments on the .demands made by three different

dramatic media. In many ways, it seemed, the microphone and _ the TV camera were. more exacting taskmasters than the critical audiences of Britain. "On the stage, and especially in Shakespeare," she says, "there is a tendency to make large movements and gestures and to rely overmuch on_ physical and visual things. Broadcasting makes you conscious of your voice and forces you to do everything with -the voice alone."*

Television, says Miss Jefford, has a similar disciplinary effect. It relies largely on close-ups, so that your face and voice must tell the whole story-"You can’t fling your arms about in front of a TV camera." In addition, the camera magnifies mistakes a hundredfold. "The attention of the viewer is more concentrated than it is on the stage," she says. "No error passes — _~

notice. It is therefore doubly important for the performance to be completely and utterly sincere." But Miss Jefford does not intend to forsake the stage for radio, television, or the cinema. For one thing, there is no visible audience, and that she considers *emakes a big difference to an actress’s performance, as well as to the enjoyment of her work. At the mention of The Mayor of Casterbridge, however, her face lit up-‘"I did enjoy that. I

admire Thomas Hardy, and I love doing dialect. Of course, it was easy for me with West Country people." The reason the West Country dialect comes easy to Miss Jefford is, of course that she was born in the West Country herself. There is no trace of dialect in her normal speech, but it is to the soft, rolling accents of Devon that she credits her pleasantly musical voice. Barbara Jefford was born at Plymstock, near Plymouth, and admits to having been "obsessed with the stage" since as early as she ¢an remember. She studied elocution, music and dancing from the age of six till 16, when she took her diploma in drama from London’s Guildhall School of Music. She then left school and for a year studied drama at Bristol under Eileen Hartly-Hodder hefore going on to the ‘Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. It was during this time that she made her first broadcast from the Bristol studios of the BBC. Since she has spent most of her time in Shakespearian productions Miss’ Jefford has little experience of modern plays. She recalled with some horror a performance in what she called "a dreadful Swedish play" entitled Frenzy. "I had to. play the part of a drunken woman," she said, "and I’d never been drunk in my life." This experience has not made her shun.the moderns, however, and she would like to take part in a play by Shakespeare’s. chief debunker, by the man who had the temerity to refinish . Cymbeline — in short, by George Bernard Shaw. Shaw’s St. Joan, she considers, is one of the greatest works ever written for the theatre.