Script by Euripides

British radio, like a British weekend, is casual, slow-paced and elastic. If the script calls for a minute of silence or three hours of steady bagpiping, the BBC's Third Program* (TIME, Nov. 4) is only too happy to oblige. British broadcasters and British listeners have no horror of dead air or of overtime. In the U.S., such dawdling is unthinkable: a production is adaptable to radio only if it can be hustled through on an hour, a half-hour or a 15-minute schedule, with carefully timed pauses for the sponsor's plugs.

Last week Manhattan listeners got an earful of the Made-in-Britain type of program. Municipal station WNYC broadcast the first of five transcriptions of great plays from the Third Program's World Theatre. If new recordings can be made, BBC promised, other interested U.S. stations and college drama groups may have the series too.

The shows had an impressive line-up of scripters: Euripides, Ibsen, Shaw, Christopher Marlowe, Rostand. They ran from a carefree one hour, one minute (Shaw's Man of Destiny") to an odd one hour, 27 minutes (Euripides' Trojan Women). Producers were from the top BBCrust. The casts were sparked with big British theatrical names.

For skeptical U.S. radiomen, BBC's Transcription Director Thomas P. Gale had a ready comment on casual British timing: ". . . If the sieve we use for selecting broadcast material leaves works like these on the wrong side, then I think we should change our mesh."

* Which next week will mark its first year on the air.

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