Not So Sorrowful Tales

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 789, 3 September 1954, Page 15

Not So Sorrowful Tales

EING written for children, the monologues of Lesley Gordon are sometimes sorrowful and sometimes not so sorrowful, but always they are inflexibly moral. For example: William Montgomery EntwistleGubby, Was upturned of nose and inclined to be tubby, Sole heir of a family well known in Hove, Whose blood, if not blue, was at any tate mauve, One would doubtless describe William Gubby as nice Were it not for his one most regrettable vice. For William Montgomery EntwistleGubby On week-days and Sundays was terribly grubby. The strange consequence of this grub-biness-by which William Montgomery was literally erased from this worldcomprises the opening of an NZBS production of Sorrowful and Not So Sorrowtul Tales to be broadcast soon by commercial stations. Also on the painful side is the story of Elvira Binns, whose parents were glad she wasn’t twins. Elvira’s trouble

was untidiness. She | tied her clothes with — bits of string and spots of glue, until her aunties, and her | uncles, too, would | shudder when she came in view, and. sav. "That girl will

drop to pieces. It’s lucky we have other nieces!" A little more cheer enters the series, however, with the story of Susan McAlister Bevington-Bales, who, though partial to music would not play her scales. Miss Susan McAlister Bevington B was thrust out through the doors of the cold BBC. "But early next morning, oh, hark, what is that? It was Susan attacking the scale of A Flat." Sorrowful and Not So Sorrowful Tales was produced by Bernard Beeby at the Wellington Studios of the NZBS. The readers are Davina Whitehouse, Kenneth Firth and William Austin. The series starts from 2ZB at 5.15 p.m. and 1ZB at 6.5 p.m. this Sunday, September 5. Stations 3ZB and 4ZB will broadcast it, beginning at 5.15 p.m. on Sunday, September 19, and 2ZA at 5.15 p.m. on Sunday, October 3.