The Radio Review
Hassan made an almost ideal broadcast play. It wits, perhaps, a pity that the two parts could not be broad- cast on consecutive evenings : Tuesday to Friday is too long an interval for the preservation of continuity in a medium so momentary as broadcasting. Robbed of the trappings which, in the original production at His Majesty's, turned it into a kind of high-brow Chu Chin Chou, Hassan stood revealed as a romantic play of considerable majesty. It was a pleasure also, to hear Delius' music uninterrupted "by the buzz of voices in the audience. I thought Ion Swinley, as Rail, towered above the other actors : he -has the perfect broadcast voice and did not indulge the tremolo that too ,often marred Henry Ainley's performance. In-the crowd-scenes, the sudden silence of all except the principal actors was sometimes con- fusing to the listener : if water must drip continually to' remind us that there is a fountain in the scene, surely it is even snore necessary that we should be reminded of the presence of a- crowd ? Mr. Val Gielgud is to be congratulated • on a memorable production -: I suspect that Hassan is a play very much after his own heart.
Previous page
