DISBELIEF SUSPENDED
ATRICK HAMILTON’S The Duke in Darkness is a juicy piece of theatrical ham, originally torn to masticable shreds on the stage by Leslie Banks and that master of neurotic acting, Michael Redgrave. It is so clearly in the tradition of Mrs. Radcliffe that it needs extraordinarily forceful playing if it is not to sound like a Perelman parody. A Duke fifteen years in a dungeon, who feigns blindness to cheat his captors, his servant who goes insane, and must be killed lest he disclose plans for the Duke’s escape, and the wicked enemy who imprisons them-these ingredients are surely dated nowadays. And while a Michael Redgrave gibbering on stage may convince, the same insane cackles on radio, without the group consent of a theatre audience, can bkecome embarrassing. It is a tribute to the NZBS version that, although it did not strike me as saying anything worth while, it held my attention. Disbelief was almost suspended before Roy Leywood’s Duke and William Austin’s Gribaud.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19541001.2.19.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 10
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166DISBELIEF SUSPENDED New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 10
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