Pain's Paranoiac

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 888, 10 August 1956, Page 21

Pain's Paranoiac

HE most enthralling Monday night play I’ve heard for a long time wasn’t really a play at all, but a documentary. Producing one of Nesta Pain’s science scripts is a new departure for the NZBS, and the Auckland studios made a good job of The Life History of a Delusion, the story of a paranoiac’s obsession with clocks which finally led him to the firm and quite happy belief that he was the arbiter of universal time. The play traced the progress of irrationality with a good deal of subtlety but kept within the limits of the title. No explanations of causes were attempted. I don’t think any causes are really known, but there are presumably theories. All we heard, however, were references to an unhappy childhood and an unstable nervous system, which do not in themselves explain much, since plenty of people possessing both escape paranoia, I was left to wonder just how far similar tendencies which I observe in myself and still more in my friends are removed from insanity, and why.

R.D.

McE.

personal acquaintance with these artists, there can be only one reason for listening to them, to wit, that the quality of their musicianship will prove sufficiently compelling to secure our undivided attention. I regret to say, that with the exception of sixteen bars of a Beethoven piano sonata, I have heard nothing from these young people which I could not have heard better played here, by artists often lacking the advantages of overseas training. And if they are going to give us chestnuts like Hummel’s Rondo and Debussy’s Clair de Lune, then let them be superlatively played. Alas, they were not. For my part, I resent having to listen to woolly Debussy and indifferent de Falla simply because the executants hail from my home town or next door to it. Two gentlemen have appeared on the programmes as speakers about their skills, Kenneth Clark, potter, and Alexander Grant, dancer, but the questions given them by Mr. Gold were interviewers’ cliché, and the responses of the gentlemen, flaccid. For example: ‘Have you any advice, Mr. Grant, for

young dancers proceeding overseas?" Mr. Grant: "Work hard, and see lots of professional dancers." Even I, a dancer with all the grace of a Spanish cow, could have rustled that one up. I found the programmes naively parochial and entirely pointless. But wait: I hear a shrill scream off. It sounds like "Give us constructive criticism!" Gladly. If. one must be parochial, do it properly. Let the New Zealand Music Society hire a public hall or a BBC studio, and give a concert of New Zealand music to astound the Pommies. Let them play Mr. Lilburn’s Chaconne for piano, his violin sonata and his trio; songs by Mr. Farquhar and Mr. Heenan, others, too; let critics be invited, and let their findings be known. Let it all be tape recorded, critics and all, and, on the mellowing of occasion, let us hear the whole programme. The New Zealand Music Society would justify its name, our music would be heard, and your irritable scribe could face the week content. And if that’s not constructive, in-

clude me out.

B.E.G.

M.