... Surreal comedy worth opening the door for By MOIRA PETTY Playwright Martin Smith borrowed nemesis, hubris and a Crook chorus from the Ancient tragedians and transplanted them to a factory's packaging department in his exuberant comedy Jeff's Kingdom (R4. Wednesday. August 2). The humour became blacker, richer and more frenzied as those tools of the gods swung into action to bring retribution ...

... When the drama is all in the voice By Moira Petty Fat, pretty, sinister, sexy-- such visual considerations mean nothing when the actor is cast in a radio play. Here the voice itself must bring us the corpulence, the boniness, the plainness, as a component of the character. But are radio drama directors really free to cast against type, and if they do, what battles will rage within the brain ...

... Hot Property's stolen moments BY MOIRA PETTY The exquisite afternoon play, The Property of Colette Nervi (BBC Belfast for R4, Thursday, April 15) began as a short story and kept its microcosmic view of life which lit up the world around it. Master wordsmith William Trevor dramatised his story of a moral sequence of events in rural Ireland in the sixties. Deftly directed by Roland Jaquarello, ...

... Moving child's eye view BY MOIRA PETTY Sometimes the Afternoon Play offers a piece, like Lulu (R4, Thursday, September 7), which is so funny, warm and original that it begs to be heard by audiences who aren't looking for an accompaniment to ironing or motoring at 2.15pm. Perhaps there is a case for a night-time repeat of daytime drama, like that of John Peel's Home Truths. What made Lulu ...

... No barriers to vintage drama BY MOIRA PETTY What is great about radio dramatisations of period pieces is that costumes and sets do not get in the way. You cannot go into a trance over an interesting curtain treatment--you have to concentrate on the voices and soon find yourself swept up in the subtext. Not that much of the motivation in Honore Balzac's Cousin Bette, the Poor Relation ...

... Wrestling with Demons Harry Younger Hall The location of this play is at first obscure. Slowly we glean that it is a dormitory in a kind of quasi-reli gious hostel for young men who are trying to deny their homosexuality a kind of AA for gays. With confes sional workshops in a dormitory pul sating with sexual tension, it seems not the best environment for kicking the homosexual habit. Jez, one ...

... A letter in the correspondence column of a magazine last year, describing a mysterious death-warning which had occurred for centuries in an Irish family, gave Maurice Vernon the idea for a new radio play which listeners will hear in Saturday Matinee in the Home Service on August 16. The warn ing, wrote the correspondent, who was a member of the family, had recurred quite recently and con ...

... United fight for independence By Moira Petty A five inch band of flesh was all that held the original Siamese twins together; that and a lifetime as the focus of man's atavistic urge to punish those who are different. Tony Court's carefully crafted play United States (R4, Monday June 17) dealt with themes of union big and small. The drama began with the impending demise of one of the ...

... LIUMPHREY LYTTELTON and his band have an impressive line-up of radio and TV dates in coming weeks. On February 6 Humph records a contribution for the Radio Lux embourg show, Stars On Wings for future transmission. On February 17. he will be heard on the BBC Home Service pro gramme, In Town Today dis cussing, with Richard Dingley, his 14 years as a bandleader and his successes, as a trumpet ...

... THE Postmaster General has turned down the application from South Western Broadcasting Limited, the West Country local radio and television company, to make a limited number of experimental sound radio missions in the Bristol area next spring. The reply to the application, which was submitted on Septem ber 25. states that until the Pilkington Committee have re ported and the Government ...

... Harden is a delight among the mayhem and murder by MOIRA PETTY THE LATTER part of this century has seen a burgeoning of religious fundamentalism, of sects, and, if recent reports arc to be believed, a wave of affirmative Christianity in which worshippers speak in tongues. Peter Roberts' play Devil's Province (BBC Pebble Mill for R4; Monday, June 20) was rather timely then, with its ...

... Tuning into the spirit of radio By MOIRA PETTY TELEVISION seems increasingly to be jettisoning the spiritual in favour of the corporeal. On ITV, Sunday nights are marked not by hymns from a far-flung cathedral but something thought more appropriate for families, films like the pugilistic Karate Kid. Even on the BBC, there is a sense of religion being allowed out of the box only on ...