Unusual Japanese play for radio

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 18

Unusual Japanese play for radio

Listening

“The Sleeping Beauties" is an unusual Japanese play •whiich deals delicately with the nature of sexual attraction and old age. It is an adaptation of the novel by Yasunari Kawabata translated by John Bester. Eguchi, a man of 65, visits an inn where the proprietors undertake to provide girls — young girls who stay asleep alongside the old men who are “past it.” These drugged girls, or “Sleeping Beauties," supposedly provide human warmth and pleasant memories for the old men they share a night with. For Eguchi, however, the experience is a disturbing one when mixed emotions surface and the sadness and despair of old age are brought into sharp relief. He does return to the inn though. Then one of the elderly clients dies and there is the possibility of scandal. This possibility becomes even more likely when one of the girls dies in her sleep. Ken Blackburn plays Eguchi in this Radio New Zealand production by Ross Jolly on Concert at 9.10 tonight. The critics A selection from the reviews, critical essays and lectures written by C. K. Stead over a period of years was published recently under the title “In the Glass Case, Essays on New Zealand Literature." The role of the literary critic within the New Zealand setting and the problems of both critic and writer are discussed in this Radio New Zealand programme by Stead himself along with“W. S. Broughton and lan Wedde. Concert, 8 p.m. '' Jazz "Jazz Tonight" at 9.15 p.m. on National features the second half of a recording of the Dick Hopp Sextet live at the Peppermill in Auckland. Guest vocalist with the band is Millie Bradfield. (Dick Hopp's "Labour of Love” can be heard in "Jazz Scene” on Friday night.) Radio stories Yvonne du Fresne received enormous public acclaim for her series "Astrid of the Limberlost” broadcast in March last year on the National Programme. A new series starting today, National, 10.30 p.m., “The Growing of Astrid Westergaard," follows the Danish girl through her schooldays and into the Second World War. As before, Astrid sees her school, surroundings and community through a filter

of Danish myth and magic. Yvonne du Fresne, herself of Danish extraction, wrote the stories out of notalgia for her primary school in 1930 s Manaw'atu. She reads the stories, which are a mixture of fact and fiction, similar perhaps to Astrid’s imaginative view of life. Dr Finlay Tomorrow afternoon in the repeat series of “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” (National, 3.05 p.m.) the housekeeper, Janet, is under threat of a court case. She has been accused of shoplifting when a musicbox which she has not paid for is found in her shopping bag. She protests her innocence but the evidence seems to be against her, until at the last moment one of Dr Cameron’s patients admits to having put the box in her bag. The characters of Dr Finlay, Dr Cameron and Janet are played as they originally were on TV by Bill Simpson, Andrew Cruickshank and Barbara Mullen. Books R. K. Narayan, the highlypraised Indian novelist who is said to be Graham Greene’s favourite, created the fictional small town of Malgudi in southern India. Malgudi is the setting for such Narayan books as “Swami and Friends," “The

Bachelor of Arts" and “The English Teacher.” On a re- ' ; cent visit to England ■ ‘ Narayan talked about his ■ writings, on the 8.8. C. books •■ ‘ programme. (Concert. 7 p.m. f i tomorrow). ; The writings of some 60 British and Commonwealth U 20th-century women novel- ! ists are considered in Mar- . garet Crosland’s book “Be- '>? yond the Lighthouse." She , believes that femininity in • i writing comes through in some surprising ways. She describes the qualities that ; make women’s novels dif- , ferent from those written by ; men. Not much was known of the first Emperor of China who ruled from 221 to 210 BC, or of the Ch’in Dynasty., Then in 1974 archaeologists’ 1 began excation Of the most spectacular tomb find in the history of modern archaeology at Mount Li in northern China. So far a magnificent life-size pottery army has been unearthed. This find has authenticated and added to the knowledge already existing about the Emperor who built the Great Wall of China and who unified the Chinese language. Historian Arthur Cotterell has chronicled this find in his book “The First Emperor of China” and talks about it on the programme.