Good characterisation is a feature of this play, which shows the discontents among the members of a successful quartet. There is Melchior, first violin and employer of the other three, pompous and egotistical. Vere, the viola, a wise cynic who never interferes with other peoples' quarrels. Paul, the 'cello, stout and good-hearted, who adds to his salary by giving private lessons, and is friend to the second violin, David.
David is the cause of all the trouble.
By going without, by looking like a rag-bag and living in a slum, he is paying off instalments on an Amati fiddle he has bought. Vere calls it idealism, Melchior foolishness. But then Melchior covets the fiddle. At all events, from the time the Amati comes into the quartet the tension increases, mounting all the time to the climax, which makes a dramatic and unexpected curtain to this individual play.
Listeners will look forward to hearing that fine actor, Frank Cellier , in the part of Melchior, for it will be his first broadcast since he played Menenius Agrippa in Coriolanus, in April last year. Frank Cellier is an actor of wide experience. He must have played in every play of Shakespeare's and in most of the old English comedies again and again. He has toured in Germany, America, the West Indies, and South Africa. Among his parts in London in the last ten years may be mentioned the Nobleman in A Man with a Load of Mischief, Mr. Amy in Mary Rose , Augustus X in The Improper Duchess, and Samuel Pepys in a revival of And So to Bed.
'Quartet' will be repeated in all Regional Programmes tomorrow night.