LOVE ON THE DOLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 924, 26 April 1957, Page 7

LOVE ON THE DOLE

OVE ON THE DOLE, by Walter Greenwood, caused quite a stir when it was published as a novel in 1933, and another stir in New Zealand when the film was shown during the war. In ZB Sunday Showcase on May 5 listeners will hear an NZBS production of the play which Walter Greenwood wrote with Ronald Gow. Hanky Park was a typical part of s dreary English industrial town in the

730s. As the factories dismissed staff, whole families tried to survive on the pitifully inadequate wages of one or two members or grudgingly given allowance of the dole, withdrawn if even one member of the family was still earning. Such conditions led to angry protests from the workers, one of whom was Larry Meath, played by Pat Smyth. He organised the demonstration that came as the crowning blow to the Hardcastle

tamily, including Sally, whom he had planned to marry. Sally is taken by Dorothy Campbell, and her care-worn mother by Nora Slaney, and Roy Leywood plays Mr Hardcastle, desperately trying to keep his family respectable in the face of complete poverty. Johnny Hardcastle, growing up to be a victim of the factory, is played by Alan Jervis, and Michael Cotterill plays Sam Grundy, the bookmaker with an eye for the ladies and a preference for Sally. Love on the Dole is essentially a grim play, as its subject is the struggle for survival in life at its most hopeless. In such surroundings Sally’s discovery of the beauty that there can be in life is precious but bitter, since it is followed by her awareness that such beauty may be forever out of her reach-and, indeed, out of the reach of all who live in Hanky Park. The Monday night YA play next week is Norman King’s drama, The Shadow of Doubt, first heard ljast year. Earle Rowell produced this mysteryadventure story for the NZBS, with John Huson as Arthur, the scientist who is being got at by a foreign Power, Defeat, a BBC production, is the YC play, which will be heard on Tuesday, April 30, from 1YC, 3YC, 4YC and 4YZ. The exiled historian Thucydides reported from afar the disastrous campaign when the Athenian fleet attacked Sicily in 415 B.C. Graham Sutherland retells the story partly in the words of Thucydides and partly in eghee. illustrating the campaign which le the total defeat of the Athenian pire. Thucydides is played by Derek Guyler, and Nicias, the unwilling leader, by Norman Shelley.