THE FINAL TEST
ROMANCE and reality are blended in an unusual combination in the BBC play to be heard from the YAs and 4YZ on Monday, July 29. The events of/The Final Test are fictitious, presenting the story of a veteran cricketer who plays for his country for the last time. But in the performance several prominent
personalities are heard as themseives, among them tne cricketers Brian Close (Yorkshire),. Frank Tyson (Northamptonshire) and Colin Cowdrey (Kent), shown left to right in the photograph above, with Patrick Barr (second from left), who plays the leading role of Sam Palmer. Other familiar
voices are those of the BBC commentators Rex Alston, Brian Johnston, and John Arlott; C. Day Lewis (who reads poetry in one of the amusing incidents attributed to the BBC Third Programme), Frank Phillips, Michael Brooke, and Christopher Pemberton. The Final Test is Sam Palmer’s last appearance on the field, and he is bitterly disappointed that his son Reggie (Ray Jackson) will not come to watch, but prefers to go and meet his hero, Alexander Whitehead, a poet and cramatist (George Benson). Sam is consoled by the sympathetic barmaid at the Stag and Hounds, Cora (Brenda Bruce), but his major consolation comes after Reggie discovers that Alexander Whitehead’s ruling passion is cricket, and that Sam Palmer was his boyhood hero, Royston Morley produced the play, which was adapted for radio by Cynthia Pughe from the story by Terence Rattigan, the author of The Sleeping Prince and The Deep Blue Sea.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570726.2.26
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 937, 26 July 1957, Page 15
Word count
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250THE FINAL TEST New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 937, 26 July 1957, Page 15
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