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THE DARK VALLEY
upon the world with the unclouded vision of bitter solitude. She tells the goose what she sees, and it is not pleasant. Here the actress becomes a kind of oracle, discoursing philosophically on the fate of this world — a fate which fuses in the alchemy of poetry with the fate of the goose.
The actress is thus soul and mind — and neither must lose direction or force.
In the playing of “The Dark Valley” we were not always successful in ringing all the changes demanded by Mr. Auden’s magnificent music. There were times when even an artist like Dame May Whitty could not ride with the furies of deep feeling and at the same time pause to make footnotes on the state of the world. The author, whose talent is equaled only by his con¬ sideration for the practical difficulties of a young dramatic medium, corrected and modified as many of these playing difficulties as seemed compatible with the integrity of the piece. To Dame May Whitty goes the palm for reaching the heights of poetic expression and remaining always believable, as the old woman who lived in a “Dark Valley.”
The original title of the Auden piece, when it first arrived, read something like this, as nearly as I can remem¬ ber : ‘ ‘ The Psychological Experiences and Sensations of the Woman Who Killed the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg.” You can’t get a thing like this into the newspaper listings of radio schedules. Editors look at it, blink, and just write “Drama.” The Columbia Workshop changed the title to “The Dark Valley.” It was heard on the evening of June 2, 1940.
Here is a brief record of W. H. Auden’s life. He was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907, the son of a physician. He was educated at private schools and gradu¬ ated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1928. From 1930 to 1935 he taught English in a boys’ boarding school and then worked for a time with the General Post Office Documen¬ tary Film Unit, under John Grierson. At the beginning of 1939 he came to the United States with the intention of becoming an American citizen and now lives in Brooklyn, N. Y.
He is the author of three volumes of poetry: “Poems,” “On The Island,” and “Another Time”; part author (in collaboration with the novelist Christopher Isherwood)
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