Marjorie Fry Radio Plays
In December 2024 I was pleased to be contacted by Graham Fry, whose mother was a playwright. and who wrote several interesting plays set in Singapore for the BBC, broadcast in the 1960s. I was lucky enough to meet Graham a few weeks later when I was giving a talk at the Soho Poly Theatre: "The Art and Craft of Radio Drama", and he gave me a copy of the existing recordings.
Here's what Graham had to say:
Marjorie Pratt was born on 16 March 1918. As you have seen from the cutting I sent you, she was keen on acting and writing even as a small girl, and by the age of ten she already wanted to be an “authoress”.
She spent the war in South Devon as a “land girl”, and in 1947, she married my father, Richard Fry, an RAF officer. Their only child, me, was born in 1949.
She was keen on amateur dramatics and wrote at least one play for the stage, but she only started to write plays for radio when my father was posted to Singapore in 1958. There was no TV in Singapore then, so the radio was a prime source of entertainment. I believe that someone at the local radio station gave her a lot of encouragement and guidance, but I cannot remember his name.
Shortly before “Singapore Sling” was broadcast, she wrote: “I have now lived in Singapore for two years. My first play, “The Night of the Key”, was written for the stage and performed in England. Subsequently it was accepted, subject to adaptation, by Radio Singapore. My second radio play, “Three Days to Friday”, was broadcast last Easter … I have studied the radio medium with great care, and have fallen in love with it! I have also fallen in love with South East Asia, and hope to do more plays with this locale! I have done a good deal of stage work, from an acting point of view … Frankly, I believe that acting experience is very helpful to a playwright, because although some lines read delightfully, they are impossible to say! (Or at least unlikely!) I have acted in two radio plays here in Singapore. An experience that has made me aware of the limitations and the possibilities of the microphone. It takes me about six months to write a play, and for every word in the final draft, I write about a hundred. I know the entire life history of all my characters and even what sort of parents they had!!!”
You already have the dates and recordings of the plays which were broadcast by the BBC. I don’t know how this came about. I do remember that she was pleased to have been allowed to attend the recording of “They Walk in Circles”, and pleased even then that the cast included Judi Dench.
Unfortunately, after that, she found it increasingly difficult to write material of the same standard, and I believe that her last broadcast play was the short one from 1967.
NOTES FROM RADIO TIMES
COFFEE IN PENANG .... 1963
A thriller for radio by Marjorie Fry. Midweek Theatre, Light Programme. 16 Jan 1963. A beautiful Chinese girl, a photographer, is murdered, and the motive is obscure. Was it an emotional crime, or was Anna Chan , perhaps, involved in something more than just a love affair? Allice Dalton , flying to Bangkok with a roll of Anna's film, is followed and attacked and at the end of a long and dangerous chase it is at last clear who killed Anna and why. Second broadcast.
Paula Trent .......... Gretel Davis,
Sqdn -Ldr Andrew MacLeish .......... Timothy West,
Allice Dalton .......... Elizabeth Morgan,
Yong Siew Kee .......... Geoffrey Matthews,
Inspector Lei .......... John Ruddocke,
Taxi driver .......... Kristophen Kum,
Temple guide .......... Eric Young.
Other parts played by Kristopher Kum , Eric Young , and members of the BBC Drama Repertory Company.
Producer .......... Betty Davies.
Nigel Deacon / Diversity Website, with thanks to Graham Fry.
