Best broadcasts of 1939-40 (1940)

The Dark Valley by W. H. Auden !LOJLOJLOJLQJUlJLOJLSLOJLOJLflJLOJLSULOJLOJLOJULOJL8_fl_SLS IN the spring of 1940, the Columbia Workshop invited the young English poet W. H. Auden to write an original piece for American radio. He wrote a half hour monologue. I believe it is the first ever broadcast in this country. It was an astonishing piece of work, sinister, mordant, upsetting, gravid with symbolism, luminous in its fears and revel¬ ations. It “squeaked and gibbered.” Its falsetto exultations shimmered like heat lightning, and its passages of psycho¬ pathic uncertainty and frustration pounded like a wreck in the surf. To give any actress the responsibility of carrying the power and the meaning of this monologue to an audience for thirty uninterrupted minutes was to hand out the hard¬ est assignment ever seen in broadcasting. Brewster Morgan, who directed the show, gave the job to Dame May Whitty. The English actress was appearing at the time in Laurence Olivier’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.” In rehearsal, Mr. Morgan, who is one of radio’s most sensitive and resourceful directors, had an interesting time with the problem that Mr. Auden had given him and that he must now give to Dame May Whitty. His comments about this are worth reading. Here is what he said : In writing “The Dark Valley” for radio, Mr. Auden presented the actress and the director with a terrifying challenge. Here, in a Gothic landscape of crags and crevices and waterfalls and abandoned mining shafts, lives a lonely woman and her goose. The twisted old soul is about to take the final step across the threshold of solitude. She is going to kill the goose. As she goes about the task, all the circumstances that have thrust her toward solitude buzz about in her mind. Here lies the poetic and dramatic action with which the actress must sway and bend and, at the same time, move forward to an inevitable conclusion. But this is only half the problem. The old woman looks down 3°