Dialogue Well Cemented
ARREN CHETHAM -STRODE’S play Background (NZBS-1YA) struck me as being especially nicely adjusted to the demands of radio. The problem of the effect of divorce on children and the tragedy of broken homes was worked out strongly, if a shade obviously, and this theme was carried through with a minimum of physical action, and in that kind of dialogue which sounds terribly easy to write
simply because it hasn’t been, It was, in fact, almost a series of dialogues carefully adjusted to reveal a small group of characters in changing attitudes towards each other. The apparently incompatible Lomaxes ‘were firmly characterised, and, although the voices of the children sounded a little too mature to me, the player of Adrian, the "sensitive" boy who threatens his would-be "new father’ with a gun, turned in a convincingly hysterical performance. However, the most wholly satisfying piece of work came'from Maria Dronke as the housekeeper confidante cumchorus, who provided the cement of the piece. This was not a sensational play, in any sense of the word. My pleasure in it probably comes mainly from the fact that it was about something, as so
few radio plays are.
J.C.
R.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540820.2.19.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 787, 20 August 1954, Page 10
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198Dialogue Well Cemented New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 787, 20 August 1954, Page 10
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