Drama in the Suburbs

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 819, 7 April 1955, Page 11

Drama in the Suburbs

'about once a month when his wife | Bella (Alison Warmington) has her first | (Bobbing Robert-the Jumping Rabbit, 'an understanding secretary (Davina HE ancient dramatists thought that tragedy was the prerogative of the great of this world. "Come, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings," Shakespeare wrote, but since his time dramatists have looked at the lives of lesser men and ‘found drama in them, too. EllestonTrevor has written a play from his own | novel about a crisis in the affairs of Edwin Redfern, an ordinary man. Bernard Beeby has produced Mister Mysterious for the NZBS, and it will be heard from 4YZ at 9.49 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, and later from other YA and YZ stations. Edwin Redfern (William Austin) is the conventional suburban husband who commutes to London and back each day. His domestic life is sliding along in a narrow groove of unspectacular misery which he has become so used to that he scarcely notices it, unless, like a sore tooth, it gives a painful jab from time to time. This, for Edwin, happens husband to visit so that he can see his son Tony (Raydia d’Eisa). Edwin, working conscientiously away at his job as Publicity Manager for a: toy factory and so on) meets an attractive girl Cherry (Melanie Paul), and hopelessly, helplessly falls in love with her, and she with him. They have the chance to spend a weekend together. Fighting his _ conscience, knowing that if he does not go he will regret not having been bold enough to snatch at a little happiness, Edwin has no one to confide in except Whitehouse), who has never married because, as she wryly says, she kndws: too much about men. Suddenly there is a crisis in Edwin’s household. He must go back and, helping his family, he comes to a better relationship with them at the price of what might have been.