Here is the info to go with the post thanks to Usenet and Roadcone.
Lesley Storm - Black Chiffon
BBC Radio 4: Saturday Night Theatre
Broadcast: Saturday 17th February 1968 @ 8:30 p.m.
On the eve of her beloved son's society wedding, the highly respected Alicia Christie makes one defiant criminal gesture - a cry for help - when she steals a black chiffon nightdress from a reputable department store. This play is a psychological study of a woman driven finally to the edge due to the accumulative stresses and strains placed upon her by her demanding and divided family.
The action of the play takes place over three days in October 1949. The play opens in the drawing room of the Christie's house on Chelsea Embankment in London. It's a mellow, comfortable room that's been lived in for a long time. Its windows look out over the river and the distant trees in Battersea Park are red and golden in the sunshine. It's Monday afternoon.
Adaptation by Mollie Hardwick of Lesley Storm's 1949 play, "Black Chiffon".
With Flora Robson [Alicia Christie], Stephen Murray [Robert Christie, Alicia's Husband], John Glen [Dr. Bennett Hawkins, the Psychiatrist], Gabrielle Blunt [Thea Hopkins, Alicia's Pregnant Daughter], Rosalind Shanks [Louise Flecher, Roy's Fiancee], Alexander John [Roy Christie, Alicia's Son], and Marjorie Westbury [Nannie].
Produced by Joe Burroughs
Re-boadcast on Monday 28th July 1975
Size: 51,275 kb kbps: 80 kHz: 44 Time: 1 hr. 27 min. 30 sec. (Mono)
Black Chiffon, London, May 1949 - review of original stage production.
Lesley Storm potholes in the caverns of the mind in Black Chiffon, at the Westminster Theatre, May 3, 1949.
"Psychiatry is becoming a cliche of the theatre," drawled the Observer's critic. "Dramatists might declare a close season for this form of pot-holing among the caverns and fissures of the mind." None the less, he had to "recognise the truth and theatrical excitement" of the latest psychodrama, "Black Chiffon".
Lesley Storm's play told the story of Mrs Christie, a wealthy woman ("voting Conservative", noted Beverley Baxter MP, reviewing the play for the Evening Standard) who steals a black chiffon nightdress on the eve of her son's wedding. Her bemused family call in a psychiatrist to work out why. This device was scarcely new, observed Baxter: "The psychiatrist has now displaced the detective in the modern theatre - an obvious improvement since he can discuss matters which would make a detective blush." And discuss he does, revealing that Mrs Christie is unhealthily attached to her son, whose fiance has a penchant for, yes, black chiffon. Just as the psychiatrist is poised to sweep into court and clear her of kleptomania, she, as Baxter put it, "realises the horrible implications of it all. She has no desire to be heralded as a modern Jocasta or to see her son branded as a possessor of the Oedipus complex."
All the critics liked the play's realism. Baxter feared that Anthony Ireland, playing the doctor, would "be doomed to psychiatry after this", while the Sunday Times's Harold Hobson described the first half of the play as "a transcript of conversations that can be heard any day in Harley Street". Hobson also thought the second half transcended the genre: "Once the illness is established, [Storm] asks what are her characters going to do about it?", making "the play, in its last reaches, both exciting and touching".
He reserved particular praise for the star, Flora Robson, who was "true and unexaggerated, as she always is in the presentation of emotional distress". Robson is probably now most famous for playing tight-lipped spinsters on screen, such as the Mother Superior in Black Narcissus . But in 1949, London audiences resented the film work that took her away from them; they cheered when she entered as Mrs Christie, playing her first stage role in three years. It was perfect casting; according to the Daily Telegraph's WA Darlington, her "ability to play women at or near the end of their emotional tether is proverbial". The Observer's critic judged it "a performance of ner vous emotion as moving as anything in [her] career".
The play ran for 416 performances in London, followed by a British tour, and then set off for the US. There, the puff went out of it. Some of the cast had changed and the play was re-rehearsed on an ocean liner en route to New England. Held up by fog, the company arrived just in time for their opening show, which was interrupted by a hurricane that shook the whole theatre. In New York, the cast got sick and reviews were lukewarm. The Herald Tribune thought the script "straggling", and the Daily News's critic claimed: "The play afforded me several long moments of nothing to do but just sit there and think that my cousins the British are a wonderfully patient people to have made this play such a hit in London."
As a testament to a transatlantic taste divide, back in Britain, the play became a rep regular. At a time when British theatre was being taken over by Angry Young Men, Storm's plays (including her other hit, Roar Like a Dove, described by one critic as "a kind of fertility rite") were particularly successful with women. Reviewing Black Chiffon, the critic at Everybody's noted that "the play moved several women round me to tears", particularly Robson's "performance as the eternal self-sacrificing female caught in a web inadvertently spun by her coarser and more stupid and self-centred menfolk - a theme women usually do enjoy".
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Here is the info to go with the post thanks to Usenet and Roadcone.
Lesley Storm - Black Chiffon
BBC Radio 4: Saturday Night Theatre
Broadcast: Saturday 17th February 1968 @ 8:30 p.m.
On the eve of her beloved son's society wedding, the highly respected Alicia Christie makes one defiant criminal gesture - a cry for
help - when she steals a black chiffon nightdress from a reputable department store. This play is a psychological study of a woman
driven finally to the edge due to the accumulative stresses and strains placed upon her by her demanding and divided family.
The action of the play takes place over three days in October 1949. The play opens in the drawing room of the Christie's house on
Chelsea Embankment in London. It's a mellow, comfortable room that's been lived in for a long time. Its windows look out over the
river and the distant trees in Battersea Park are red and golden in the sunshine. It's Monday afternoon.
Adaptation by Mollie Hardwick of Lesley Storm's 1949 play, "Black Chiffon".
With Flora Robson [Alicia Christie], Stephen Murray [Robert Christie, Alicia's Husband], John Glen [Dr. Bennett Hawkins, the
Psychiatrist], Gabrielle Blunt [Thea Hopkins, Alicia's Pregnant Daughter], Rosalind Shanks [Louise Flecher, Roy's Fiancee],
Alexander John [Roy Christie, Alicia's Son], and Marjorie Westbury [Nannie].
Produced by Joe Burroughs
Re-boadcast on Monday 28th July 1975
Size: 51,275 kb kbps: 80 kHz: 44 Time: 1 hr. 27 min. 30 sec. (Mono)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Black Chiffon, London, May 1949 - review of original stage production.
Lesley Storm potholes in the caverns of the mind in Black Chiffon, at the Westminster Theatre, May 3, 1949.
"Psychiatry is becoming a cliche of the theatre," drawled the Observer's critic. "Dramatists might declare a close season for this form
of pot-holing among the caverns and fissures of the mind." None the less, he had to "recognise the truth and theatrical excitement" of
the latest psychodrama, "Black Chiffon".
Lesley Storm's play told the story of Mrs Christie, a wealthy woman ("voting Conservative", noted Beverley Baxter MP, reviewing the
play for the Evening Standard) who steals a black chiffon nightdress on the eve of her son's wedding. Her bemused family call in a
psychiatrist to work out why. This device was scarcely new, observed Baxter: "The psychiatrist has now displaced the detective in the
modern theatre - an obvious improvement since he can discuss matters which would make a detective blush." And discuss he does,
revealing that Mrs Christie is unhealthily attached to her son, whose fiance has a penchant for, yes, black chiffon. Just as the
psychiatrist is poised to sweep into court and clear her of kleptomania, she, as Baxter put it, "realises the horrible implications of it all.
She has no desire to be heralded as a modern Jocasta or to see her son branded as a possessor of the Oedipus complex."
All the critics liked the play's realism. Baxter feared that Anthony Ireland, playing the doctor, would "be doomed to psychiatry after
this", while the Sunday Times's Harold Hobson described the first half of the play as "a transcript of conversations that can be heard
any day in Harley Street". Hobson also thought the second half transcended the genre: "Once the illness is established, [Storm] asks
what are her characters going to do about it?", making "the play, in its last reaches, both exciting and touching".
He reserved particular praise for the star, Flora Robson, who was "true and unexaggerated, as she always is in the presentation of
emotional distress". Robson is probably now most famous for playing tight-lipped spinsters on screen, such as the Mother Superior in
Black Narcissus . But in 1949, London audiences resented the film work that took her away from them; they cheered when she entered
as Mrs Christie, playing her first stage role in three years. It was perfect casting; according to the Daily Telegraph's WA Darlington, her
"ability to play women at or near the end of their emotional tether is proverbial". The Observer's critic judged it "a performance of ner
vous emotion as moving as anything in [her] career".
The play ran for 416 performances in London, followed by a British tour, and then set off for the US. There, the puff went out of it. Some
of the cast had changed and the play was re-rehearsed on an ocean liner en route to New England. Held up by fog, the company
arrived just in time for their opening show, which was interrupted by a hurricane that shook the whole theatre. In New York, the cast got
sick and reviews were lukewarm. The Herald Tribune thought the script "straggling", and the Daily News's critic claimed: "The play
afforded me several long moments of nothing to do but just sit there and think that my cousins the British are a wonderfully patient
people to have made this play such a hit in London."
As a testament to a transatlantic taste divide, back in Britain, the play became a rep regular. At a time when British theatre was being
taken over by Angry Young Men, Storm's plays (including her other hit, Roar Like a Dove, described by one critic as "a kind of fertility
rite") were particularly successful with women. Reviewing Black Chiffon, the critic at Everybody's noted that "the play moved several
women round me to tears", particularly Robson's "performance as the eternal self-sacrificing female caught in a web inadvertently
spun by her coarser and more stupid and self-centred menfolk - a theme women usually do enjoy".