Snobs Corner

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 891, 31 August 1956, Page 20

Snobs Corner

E live in a strange world where nouns can be verbs, adjectives nouns, and anything at all, it seems, can be turned into a musical. I listened in Sunday Showcase to The. King and I,

formerly, before transmogrification, Anna and the King of Siam. I thought it awful nonsense. The story is engaging enough; prim widow setting out to educate the barbarians, and conquering them, not by force, but by feminine wiles, and the thought of a crinoline, backed by a good Victorian education, afloat on the brackish waters, of what must have seemed the most unlicenced vice, is to say the least, piquant. But all this is turned into the soupiest gruel. Those lyrics! That deadly boom-booming music! I solemnly aver that anyone who listens to it with care will find it empty, vacuous, and entirely pointless. To which I shall be told that thousands of Londoners and New Yorkers sat through it with every sign of delight. To which I reply that they must be bored stiff with life to endure something which can titilate only the remotest fringe of the intellect and the emotions. To which it will be said I am a snob. To which I reply that sticks and stones may break my bones, etc. I like musicals; I always have. I rush along to each new one, my eyes shining. I emerge fretful and downcast. They are simply not good enough, not witty enough, not musical enough. They won’t do! The NZBS prepared this one from the sound track of the film. Roy Ley-

wood elected to use a Scottish accent as the Siamese Prime Minister. In this topsy-turvy world, I found it appro-

priate.

B.E.G.

M.