Roman Sunset

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 890, 24 August 1956, Page 20

Roman Sunset

"THANKS largely to Bernard Shaw, contemporary idiom has_ replaced Victorian Wardour Street and fakeShakespearian in the dialogue of historical plays--and very effective it usually is, too. Yet plays like R. C. _Sherriff’s The Long Sunset make me wonder if a more stylised language wouldn’t often be more appropriate. This drama about the fate of the late Romans in Britain after the departure of the legions I thought most interesting: and sometimes quite moving. The 'scenes in which a departing slave in- ' sists on buying his liberty and that in 'which the Roman, Julian, is baptised by his Christian wife had the real stuff of drama in them. But I found it almost _impossible to take the polite BBC play(ers with their polite accents speaking | Sherriff’s polite dialogue for anything | but characters in a modern drawingroom drama, with Arthur the C.O. of a neighbouring air-field dropping in for a friendly whisky. On. the stage, costumes and settings doubtless would establish the right mood. But on the radio, I feel, a more ringingly poetic speech is needed to create the illusion of a distant age. They order these things better in France. So, for me, The Long Sunset, interesting and thoughtful as it was, seemed as remote from the real ancient Britain as 18th century versions of Homer from their originals.