Finest Hour

Radio last week had one of its finest hours. It was a passion play, The Son of Man, arranged by Archibald MacLeish and broadcast by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

To make the play, Poet MacLeish reverently lifted pieces from the four gospelers and from Bach's B Minor Mass, St. John Passion and St. Matthew Passion. These fitted elements he reconciled into a compelling drama. And he reconciled the whole drama, in a way that has seldom been done, with the special predicaments of broadcasting.

"I got the idea," explained MacLeish, "that the radio way to do this thing was to let the four voices of the gospelers tell the story in their own words.* That way, by a frequent shift of voices, dramatic interest could be kept up, and the broadest sense of the witness could be conveyed." To connect, extend and impel the tragedy, he added the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The conjunction conceived a few magnificent moments: when the chorus snatches the question, "Lord, is it I?" from Matthew's lips, carries it off in a gust of singing; when, describing the events at the sepulcher, the speakers achieve an awesome counterpoint with their deepening, astounded repetitions. The passage:

Mark: And very early in the morning the first day of the week they came unto the sepulcher . . .

Luke: ... very early in the morning ...

John:. . . when it was yet dark . . .

Luke: . . . and they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher.

Mark: And entering into the sepulcher they saw a young man . . . and he saith unto them, "Be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him."

Matthew: He is not here; for he is risen, as he said.

Luke: He is not here but is risen. . . .

* The Gospel's have long been dramatized during Holy Week in a somewhat different way by the Catholic Church. One deacon chants the narrative passages, another the words of Christ, another all the other speeches; the choir portrays all crowds and assemblies.

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