Inspired Ham
HAVE heard few better radio plays than Colin Shaw’s Salamis and Victory, dealing with the defeat of the Persian Xerxes by the Greeks. Rising to the challenge of his medium, Mr. Shaw has written a work which rings with noble phrases, matches the magnificent theme with a real imaginative sweep, and in its fluid treatment of time and place, recalls Shakespeare. At the centre of the BBC production was that great radio actor, Donald Wolfit, whose capacity for inspired ham made Xerxes a larger-than-life creation. In contrast, David King-Wood’s Thermosticles was pitched on a note of quiet resolution. Their measured speaking of Colin Shaw’s brilliant rhetoric wove an epic pattern in which the "modern lesson" seemed to me of less significance than the timeless theme of powerlust and of men fighting for Ja terre charnelle. Only one thing slightly marred the production for me-the presence of
a Spartan whose articulation reminded me of "Dithguthted of Tunbridge Wells." And when it was all over, Xerxes humiliated, and Greece triumphant, I couldn’t help wondering just how much of a propagandist the historian Herodotus was, and how Salamis would have appeared through the eyes of a Persian Herodotus,
J.C.
R.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570308.2.23.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 917, 8 March 1957, Page 15
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199Inspired Ham New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 917, 8 March 1957, Page 15
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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