ON THE AIR
THE scene of The First Born, a poetic drama by Christopher Fry, was ancient Egypt, and I think a mild criticism of the timing of this broadcast is justified—even though that timing may have been deliberate. It is not many weeks since we heard Mr. Leonard Cottrell's imaginative interpretation of the story of the Pharaoh Aknaton, and that was followed by his dissertation on the ancient art of tomb-robbing from the reign of Rameses IX to the present day. There is no doubt a great deal to be said for the opinion expressed by Miss Rose Macaulay in the B.B.C. Year Book that one of the essential aims of the Third Programme is to extend our view into the more distant prospects of time and space, but others must have felt as I did that the dust might well have been allowed to settle on the tombs of Egypt for a little longer before being stirred up again.
* * * Fortunately Mr. Fry's writing was powerful enough to break down this resistance in the first few minutes. There was something big about this play, particularly in the conception and portrayal of the character of Moses, who might have been hewn out of granite. The dialogue which the author put into the mouth of this leader of the Jews was massive in its effect but still fluent enough for the purposes of drama. And it was skilfully varied. Here and there a line or two stood out because what had been memorably written was admirably delivered. The whole tortured history of a race seemed to be compressed into the line, " I am the conscript of an autocracy of grief." And yet when I heard that " small-talk had to stop a draught up, ten years old " I wondered whether sometimes an unnecessarily large vessel was not setting forth with a rather small cargo of meaning, and I was quite certain that in one highly pitched scene there came a sudden flattening of the tone when one of the characters was called upon to say, " I suppose there must be powers of darkness, but they should keep to the rules." The production, by Robert Gittings, was excellent throughout.
* * * The week's edition of London Magazine began with two or three minutes of obvious travelogue in which we were told, among other things, that the Thames is a " rich girdle for a noble city," that there are thirty-three miles of docks, and that, as Kenneth Grahame told us many years ago, it is fun messing about in boats ; then we got down to the real business which was more than usually interesting. Among the people brought to the microphone were—an old ferryman from East Twickenham who had been " on the water " for sixty- four years, an amateur archaeologist from Chelsea, a married couple who live in a river-boat, a stevedore and regulars of that old inn in Wapping which no roving commentator or river-minded journalist seems able to miss. The archaeologist, who spends his Sunday mornings raking in the mud of the Thames, had a breathless list of relics of the past he had found there, the earliest a flint necklace. It was interesting to learn that before long his collection will be on view in the Guildhall Museum. The stevedore spoke with great vigour about the unpleasantness of handling such cargoes as lamp- black, sulphur, fishmeal and hides. Often in programmes of this " magazine " type the contributors are too obviously being manoeuvred away from something they really want to say in order to provide some pleasant and chatty gossip ; so I was glad when this speaker was able to make a very effective appeal for a better medical service in the dock area. It took him just about fifteen seconds, but it was the thing that remained most clearly in my mind after the broadcast. This programme was enlivened by a very charming song by Dibdin about Chelsea Ferry.
* * * * Two new serials have started recently—The Vaguelys and Captain Kettle. There is no doubt whatsoever about the success of Julian Somers as Kettle. The first instalment was devised in such a way as to give even those listeners who have not previously met this hero all the salient features of his character in a few bold dramatic strokes—his handiness with his fists, his love of cats, his relations with his wife and his fiery independence.
* * * Not since the D-day on-the-spot recordings has there been report- age of the quality to be found in Report from India. The survey is detached and impartial, and there are times when it seems far away ; but then suddenly—as with the recording of the wailing of a grief-stricken woman—events are brought close to us in a startling
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