TIFH Revisited

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 916, 1 March 1957, Page 21

TIFH Revisited

themselves on this height, frittering away in the quarrels of Brutus and Cassius, and their shaky last stands. The BBC version was ruthlessly pruned, Portia and Calpurnia disappearing altogether, and whole and sometimes crucial scenes were removed. I found it hack Shakespeare, scrupulous only as to sound values: the word "statue" was carefully pronounced "statua" to preserve the iambic pentameter, but many scenes were scurried through, and the Forum scene was poor. Ralph Michael played the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" as if Antony’s "plain, blunt man" were the literal truth;' there was no subtlety, no irony, in a word, no art. And this applied to nearly all the cast. At the end, like Hamlet, I had as lief the Town Crier had spoken their lines.

"THERE was a time when I never missed Take It From Here, but my interest languished, and it must be two years since my last encounter. I tuned in the other night to see how they were getting on. My report: no change. Dick is still old, and Jimmie vain, the Glums rather glumly unfunny, with Ron prostrate after three helpings of sherry trifle; and Alma Cogan sang a remarkably silly song, "You Can Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo," a prosposition so obvious that demonstration seems needless. Punch lines no longer had their coup de .-

grace adroitness, though I may have struck them on an off night. The later part of the show, however, was much better, where the boys got entangled with Wells’s Time Machine, racketing up and down the centuries, with Dick finally discovered seated behind Lady Godiva on her horse. This was ‘vintage TIFH, and a joy. A chance reference in this passage to the date showed me that this episode was recorded in 1955, which explains, perhaps, why some of the cracks failed to register, Far-flung antipodean outpost we may be, but in this age of speed; surely not so far-flung as

all that?

B.E.G.

M.