Thursday 31 May 1928 Daventry 5GB 10.15-11.15

Nurse Henrietta - Lilian Harrison

In this remarkable monodrama, there are many characters but only one voice.

There is almost no action, for incident loses itself in soliloquy; nevertheless, suspense, love, hate, jealousy, death, a trial scene are all vividly depicted.

The story of 'Nurse Henrietta' may be regarded as either phantasy or as reality. Life, after all, is made up of both, although contained in each. Here is a paradox of which the art of the writer aims at providing a solution.

The reproduction of this curiously intimate kind of drama by means of the microphone marks another advance in the technique of radio play-writing.

Wednesday 29 August 1928 London and Daventry 9.50-11

Nurse Henrietta - Lilian Harrison

The Listener and Producer have, since the inception of broadcasting, been collaborators in a series of experiments.

Their object has been to discover - and there is no doubt that it will be discovered - a form (or forms) of drama which shall be truly 'radiogenic'.

The ideal radio drama (like a film) must be something which is not in any sense a substitute, a consolation for those who cannot go to the theatre; but a dramatic production for which the microphone is clearly either the only medium or at least not inferior to any other.

'Nurse Henrietta' is inconceivable on the stage. It is full of action which is visualized, yet only emerges like a pattern from a background of thoughts which are made objective in soliloquy.

Here, it seemed, was material which should be put to the proof. Kesser's monodrama, in which one voice speaks for several characters, was produced some months ago as an experiment from 5GB and was later repeated from one of the provincial stations, and tonight, therefore, is to be performed for the third time.