WINTER LISTENING FOR ALL EARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 822, 29 April 1955, Page 6

WINTER LISTENING FOR ALL EARS

| a % , ISTENERS will hear the best programmes, live and_ recorded, sooner and much more widely under a comprehensive plan for the principal National stations announced this week. The plan also aims to make better use of evening listening hours. It becomes effective with the programmes printed in this issue, and will cover for a start the first part of the Winter, when most listening is likely to be done. The Supervisor of Programme Organisation for the National Division, M. A. Rickard, told The Listener that the plan will cover all types of programmesplays and short stories, serials, talks and documentaries, serious and light music, and variety. It will affect YA, YC and YZ stations, though, keeping in mind their restricted hours and local needs, X stations also will benefit. "This is the first comprehensive planning of National programmes we've had on a Dominion-wide basis," Mr. Rickard said, "and throughout our aim has been to give listeners a better service. As the first part of the plan covers only three months we'll bé able to review it quite soon in the light of experience. In any case, we will keep our planning as flexible as possible so that Stations can adapt their programmes to local needs. On the YC stations we will need flexibility to allow for coverage of broadcasts by visiting artists. A great number of artists will visit New Zealand this season, and we are seeing to it that both their solo and orchestral concerts are heard more widely than ever before throughout the country." The new plan will make extensive use of the wide band lines, though it does not depend on them. It provides, too, for a regular listening time for the different types of programmes each night through the Winter period. For ex-ample-and as an experiment-a major NZBS play will be broadcast from YA stations each Saturday between 7.30 and 9.0 p.m., followed at 9.30 p.m. by the BBC variety show formerly heard at 8.30 p.m. The new programme plan for the National Division has been worked out by a committee under the Supervisor of Programme Organisation, M. A. Rickard. Other members are J. H. Hall (Talks), Bernard Beeby (Productions), M. S. B. Btchanan (Transcriptions), Bessie Pollard (serious music) and Geoffrey Newson (light music and variety). Mr. New-. -son has also had much to do with coordinating the various sections of the plan. Also present at all meetings to

interpret the stations’ poipt of view was the 2YA Programme Organiser, John Reed. Mr. Rickard has just been awarded an Imperial Relations Trust bursary and expected to leave for England this week (April 26). His special study there will be programme planning at the BBC, both in London and the regions, but he will also discuss religious programmes and look into the availability of music for use in New Zealand. He expects to go to the Edinburgh and Three Choirs Festivals, and aims to widen his knowledge of the musical and entertainment world generally. On this page and the next, and elsewhere in this issue, we describe some of the programmes listeners will hear during the Winter months. DRAMA, SHORT STORIES HEN the firelight flickers and the curtains are drawn against the dark then the curtain of the radio theatre Swishes up and horror, mystery, comedy or tragedy take the stage. For Winter listening Saturday night is going to be top of the bill from YA stations. Among the new NZBS productions will be It Won’t Be a Stylish Marriage, a comedy of three old gentlemen who engage a housekeeper; The Sea Tower, a drama of pathological jealousy adapted from the novel by Hugh Walpole; and Quiet Night, which tells the story of one night in a large general hospital. These Saturday night plays will be heard later from YZ stations. The first play to be broadcast under the new scheme at 7.30 p.m. on May 7 is A Ram in the Thicket, by Mary Flack, a drama of a Jewish boy brought up in England and then taken to Palestine. Winter listening from the YCs brings several plays in the World Theatre series, These include the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, in a new translation by Louis MacNeice, and Romeo and Juliet, starring the famous English actress Peggy

Ashcroft, now acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant ornaments of the contemporary stage. The role of Juliet is her favourite part. She first played it for the Oxford University Drama Society in what was John Gielgud’s first production with a cast which included Edith Evans, Christopher Hassal and Terence Rattigan (in a one-line part). Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, the crude, powerful melodrama which is a direct ancestor of Hamlet, will be heard in July with a cast led by the late Cecil Trouncer as Hieronimo. A piece of radio in which there should be ‘particular interest is Louis MacNeice’s Prisoner’s Progress, a drama of escape and imprisonment loosely based on data from World War Two. MacNeice says it has no moral and makes no claim to be documentary. It will be heard early in June from YA and YZ stations. Shorter plays to be heard from YA and X stations include an NZ'BS-pro-duced comedy, Fifty Pigs, Peter Cheyney’s thriller Velvet Johnnie, and the charming fairy story fdr adults, The Little Prince, by Antoine de St. Exupéry, the airman-author. The last tells how, after a forced landing in the Sahara, the author meets a small boy from another planet, a tiny asteroid containing one rose-bush and three small volcanoes. The little Prince has wandered from planet to planet meeting people so obsessed by matters of great consequence that they let the eternal miracles of Nature pass them by. The Winter's sheaf of short stories includes several by New Zealand authors, among them Anton Vogt, George Joseph and Nancy Bruce. These stories will be heard from YA, YZ and X stations during the next few months. SERIALS ‘ HE scene is Stalag Luft III, Sagan, Germany, 1944. Six hundred Air Force officers, ‘led by the ruthless Big X, dig six tunnels, 30 feet deép, and up to

350 feet long, with underground tramways, workshops and air pumping chambers. They forge 400 passes, make 250 compasses, and print 4000 maps. Then 76 of the prisoners escape through the tunnels. Listeners can hear of the Great Escape and its bitter aftermath in an Australasian Radio Production serial starting from 3YZ at 8.0 p.m. on Mondayj May 2, and later from other YZ stations. Guy Doleman plays the lead. In the BBC serial, Red for Danger, people get pushed around or do the pushing in a search for the secret metal, Kratz Alloy. Among them are David Conway (hero), Pat Manners (heroine), both of Devil to Pay fame, Johnny Johnstone (villain), Red Farley (unknown quality) and Bella D’Amati (who becomes the corpus delicti). Red for Danger will begin from 1YA on May 6 at 7.15 p.m., 2YA on May 3 at 7.30 p.m., 3YA on May 5, at 8.0 p.m., and 4YA on May 6 at 9.50 p.m. A BBC version of The Man of Property, the first novel of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, will begin from 1YC at 7.30 p.m. on May 4, and 3YC at the same time on May 2. Ronald Simpson plays Soames, Forsyte and Leo Genn plays young Jolyon. Anather BBC adaptation of a famous novel is Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which involves the Prince of Wales, Lord Nelson, George Brummel, a_pugilistic encounter and a haunted house. It will begin from 2YZ at 7.30 p.m. and 3YZ at 8.0 p.m. on May 7, and 4YZ at 8.15 p.m on May 8. No Lullaby for Lise, which tells how an Australian woman tries to trace her lost daughter first behitid the Iron Curtain, then across Germany to America, can be heard from the YA stations, starting from 1YA on Thursday, May 5, at 8.30 p.m., and a radio adaptation of Naomi Jacob’s trilogy, Four Generations, with Marcia Hart as Juliana Gollantz, and Richard Davies as Old Emmanuel, begins at 4YZ on Thursday, May 5, at 8.12 p.m,