Radio Times {lncorporaling World·J(adiol January 24,-1947, BBC PROGRAMMES __ FOR Vol.. 94, No •. 1217. Registered at the ~.P.O. as a Newspaper WELSH EDITION Jan. 26 Feb. I TWOPENCE JOURNAL OF --- TH E SSC P RI C E Home Service ESSEX contributes Sunday's 'Country Magazine' 'CENWCH 1M' YR HEN GANIADAU' A programme of old Welsh songs on Sunday evening HENRY HALL'S GUEST NIGHT from the Finsbury Park Empire, London, on Tuesday 'JOHNNY NOBLE' Story of an East-Coast fisherman Radio version of a 'Theatre Workshop' production: Thursday GERAINT GOODWIN -A portrait of the Welsh novelist by T. Rowland Hughes on Friday 'OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES' A. A. Milne's play in Saturday­ Night Theatre ~ Light Programme DICK BARTON'S ADVENTURES Every weeknight at 6.45 : omnibus edition on Saturday at 11.0 a.m. 'IGNORANCE IS BLISS' 'The limit-of human stupidity' on Monday evening- "SENSATION' _The suffragette who threw herself in front of the King's horse: Tuesday THE ROYAL TOUR. Their Majestif!S the King and Queen,. accompanied by the two WILFRED PICKLES Princesses, sail for Cape ToWn on Saturday, February I, to begin a nine-weeks' tour of the The' Have a Go !' quiz visits Ayr ynion of South Africa and Rhodesia. It will be the first visit of Their Majesties to South Africa on Wednesday , 'MUCH-BINDING-IN-THE-MARSH' T every stage"of the tour listeners at home will HE Fourth Test Match begins at Adelaide on Thursday and Sunday (Friday; Home) A be kept in touch with the Royal progress T Friday, and as Adelaide is much farther west through the reports of BBC commentators and than Melbourne, play 'starts half-an~hour later than FOURTH TEST MATCH observers. For ·details of the arrangements see page in the Eastern States. Consequently, listeners to the three of this issue. _ __ Light Programme will be able to hear the last hour­ Ball-by-Ball commentaries from The Royal departure from Waterloo Station on and-a-half of commentary, followed by the usual" Adelaide on Friday and Saturday Friday afternoon will be covered by Stewart Mac­ daily suminary from 8.30 to 8.40 a.m. The team Pherson and Audrey Russell. Their commentaries­ of commentators will be the same as in the previous will be heard in the Home Services from 2.25 to Test Matches-the four Australians, Victor Richard­ Third Programm/e .2.45 p.m. MacPherson will be on No. 11 platform, son, Jack Fingleton, Alan McGilvray, Halford from which the Royal train leaves, and Audrey Hooker and our own Arthur Gilligan. Russell will be outside the station to describe the RALPH RICHARDSON scene as the procession arrives. Audrey Russell has HAT makes different musical.' instruments as Captain Ahab in 'Moby Dick' done commentaries for the BBC's Overseas Services, W sound different? Why, for instance, does a _on Sunday and Friday but this will be her first important Home Service violin playing middle C sound different from a broadcast. clarinet playing the same note?_ This is one of the BERNARD SHAW FESTIVAL­ When, later in- the afternoon, Their Majesties go questions tnat will be answered by Professor E. N. on board H.M.S. Vanguard, .the scene in .Ports­ Second Week da C. Andrade, F.~.S., in the second programme mouth- dockyard will be described by Frank Gillard 'The Shewing-l:Jp of Blanco Posnet' of the new series, Sound On The Air. Professor from the Admiral's look-out, and by - Richard Andrade's talk will be illustrated by special record­ on Tuesday Dimbleby from a position on the jetty. 'The Apple-Cart' on Wednesday ingsof all types of instrument, from the violin to The same commentators will give a brief descrip­ the xylophone. (Third Programme, Monday.)- tion of the scene in the dockyard when H.M.S. 'PELLEAS ET MELISANDE' Vanguard hauls off ·shortly after 7 a.m. on Satur­ Debussy's opera from Paris on Thursday day. Frank Gillard is sailing in the ship, and in OWARD MARSHALL will broadcast a com­ the course of the morning 1e will make three H mentary on the Rugby International between 'ADMETO' reports-at 8.10 a.m. (Home Services), 9.10 a.m. Scotland and Wales at Murrayfield, Edinburgh, on Handel's opera in full from the (Light Programme), and 11.15 a.m. app. (Home S-aturday, February 1. He will be assisted by the studio on Saturday Services). former International forward, ' Jock' Wemyss. 4 RADIO TIMES January 24. 1947, Captain Ahab and The Great White Whale Herman Melville's allegoric novel, first sighted you will really know what a whale is of my own concoction, and on two of these • Moby . Dick '_0-perhaps the greatest like, how he is hunted, and what will be done occasions I have given myself the treat of para­ with him after the kill. You have already met phrasing Melville's prose. I have had to cut some masterpiece in the literature 0 of the sea with, killed, divided Cand .. even eaten part of) of the book's finest incidents to avoid reduplica­ -has been adapted for radio and will several normal whales; you may therefore better tions not apparent in a long book, but glaringly be presented this week in the Third Pro­ judge the unique beauty and terror of the white apparent in a short play. But the major things gramme, on Sunday and Friday, with Sir . whale himself. I have not felt at liberty to tamper with, even _Now that I have mentioned these things, I when they present to the 'medium' great diffi­ Ralph Richardson as Captain Ahab. am conscious that they are- the things that a culties in execution. Fortf one adapts such a HENRY REED, wllO has made the radio radio-drama based on Melville's book has largely book at all, one must make concessions, and version, discusses the symbolism of 'the .to omit: It is upon the" book's symbolism and large ones, to itS original and stupendous gran­ tragedy that an adaptation must be based; and deur. One must not try to tidy up Stonehenge. tale and explains how he has tackled the an ,adaptation which did not try to present these problems of adaptation clearly would be pointless.· In England, Moby Dick- is a book more often talked about than read; but most people who do tafk about it y the time Herman Melville's Moby Dick know that it is more than a white whale that 0 appeared, in 1851, its author's life at sea Ahab is pursuing, and some of tIlemwill tell Bwas already behind· him. He had sailed you that l\-1oby Dick is a presentation of evil. before the mast in trading-vessel, whaler, and But 'many an artist could think up that for a man-of-war; and into less than half-a-dozen subject, and the ease with which evil can be years he bad crowded what seems like a life­ depicted is sometimes, I am inclined to think, time of experience. He had written five other underrated. books, including Omoo, Typee, and Redburn; and he was still only thirty-two. Ahab the Arch-Rebel Moby Dick is what Henry James would call. At all events we miss a good deal if we think a 'baggy' book, and \into the big a prodigious of the white whale as merely eV11; Moby Dick number of things have been packed. But packed . and the element in which he lives are, I believe, they have been, and not merely flung; and none little less than the face and the unquestionable of them could have been labelled '0 not wanted judgment of God. Perhaps, Melville seems to on the voyage.' Re-reading the book, one is . be saying, ,the face has at times expressions of more and more struck with the way in which apparent evil, the judgment a frequent brutality; everything fits in. At first, undoubtedly, it is but it is nbt man's part in life to strike out, or the great story of the insulted, demoniac Ahab to rebel against that judgment. Ahab is the arch­ pursuing the white whale, Moby Dick, that takes rebel; time has wronged him, and he cries for our imagination. One is a little anxious for the revenge; and that is fatality and tragedy: 'For various preludes to be over so that the plot may what is man that he should live out the lifetime begin; and perhaps at a first reading one is of his God? ' SIR RALPH RICHARDSON. who plays Captain Al.ab inclined 0 to skip the many technical chapters But there is a danger in all 'interpretation' about whaling and whaling history and the of great literature; and while one is in the midst history of whales, which are disposed about the of Moby Dick, 'problems of 'meaning' rarely book. trouble us. For that reason, in my adaptatiori I The End of the Hunt Preparing for the Climax have tried, so far as possible, to let Melville (From the last chapter of • Moby Dick') speak for himself in his own magnificent words. But once the great central drama is known to And in" accepting, as one .must, the grave limi­ The beats had not gone very far, when by a us, it is these curious details that often recall our tations of the radio as a means of expression, signal frem the mast-heads--a dewnward peinted attention. They are seen not as digressions but I have' resisted the temptations to give in to arm, Ahab knew that thb whale had seunded; but as parts of an ambitIous and comprehensive these limitations unduly.