Without Enthusiasm

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 801, 26 November 1954, Page 10

Without Enthusiasm

"THREADING my way through a week’s listening in search of something I could let myself go on I have come to the mournful conclusion that there is nothing. Cotsford Burdon, from whom I always expect great things in the way of wit and the ridiculous rolling phrase, lay stranded in a script that refused to let him move forward in any set direction, That was in 3YC’s Youth at the Prow. Having begun to listen to 3ZB’s The Joker I shall stop because I neither approve of, nor can bear, the cruel attitude of the chief narrator, laughing and crowing over the fate which overtakes the clever criminals whose stories he tells. Compassion is one of the main values which modern criticism looks for in the first-rate story. Its absence may be bearable in the melodrama or the thriller, but its opposite is unbearable. Had I the words to match the rich contralto voice of Mary Pratt singing "My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair" over 3YC, then indeed I should be justified in a more fulsome treatment of the programme in which she and Maurice Till (piano) took, part. But in common with thousands whose feelings outstrip their imagination these few words are the only indication I can give of unstinted admiration.