Diatribe

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 926, 10 May 1957, Page 21

Diatribe

RECENT conversation runs like this: "Why don’t you review more NZBS plays?" "Because the plays don’t interest me." "Why don’t they?" "Because they are, on the whole, more or less accurate reproductions of secondrate English successes of twenty years ago." "Then shouldn’t you say something about that?" I should, and will. In the past few months, I have listened to many NZBS plays in a variety of dialects: Welsh, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Scottish; and there have been plays translated from the Spanish and the French. But, to my knowledge, there has not been a single play by a New Zealand author in, say, the last six months. Now, the quality which unites all these regional and translated plays has been’ a general second-rateness; none has been quite worthless, none really distinguished, and the NZBS has mace a good job of them. But my point now, which I should like to hammer home, is that if English second-rate is good enough for the NZBS, why should not our own second-raters be acceptable? No doubt few first-rate plays have been written in New Zealand, but if regional comedy is to be the norm, then there is plenty of this here quite good in its way, of which I have personal experience, no less amusing and workmanlike than some of the potboilers we have heard since Christmas. Last year, the Invercargill Centennial Committee offered a handsome prize for a threeact play. The competition attracted over sixty entries from some of the most distinguished literary reputations in this country. Six were named by the judge in his placing. Does the NZBS Propose to produce them? Have they solicited /scripts from all the authors who entered? I really think they should, if broadcast drama is to be taken seri-

ously in this country.

B.E.G.

M.