Themes from a Play
Y following through two of the three strands of the Midsummer Night's Dream plot the NZBS and the New Zealand Players gave us in forty minutes something much more satisfying than a mere programme of excerptsmanaged, in fact, to put a girdle round the play. The fairy theme certainly deserved the close-up provided by the microphone, for it was in the fairy passages that David Farquhar’s music revealed its complete felicity, and the producer his recognition of its felicitythere was exquisite harmony in intervals and assonance between ‘Titania’s words, the notes of the glockenspiel, the twitterings of the fairies and Bottom’s occasional bray. And one felt that the characters in the Dream who, on stage, have less chance of winning audience affection, here in the radio version came into their own. For, While Bottom and Puck emerged at radio level somewhat colourlessly, Oberon was revealed in full tonal splendour, and even Hippolyta, usually regarded as a clothes-horse part, stirred the heart oddly with the microphone-revealed pause ("Like to a-silver bow, newbent in heaven") while she reached, triumphantly, for her simile.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540806.2.20.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 785, 6 August 1954, Page 10
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184Themes from a Play New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 785, 6 August 1954, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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