This was Reginald Berkeley’s first radio play and clearly derives from the grand guignol tradition.
It is supposed to be a fast and impactful ‘shocker’- bringing entertainment to early radio listeners through a horror story. The ending ‘He hasn’t got a face! He hasn’t got a face!’ leaves everything to the imagination.
It is supposed to be spine tingling. BBC Radio Drama is finding its way in the new medium of theatre of the mind and sound drama.
The BBC’s Radio Times for 14th April 1925 said the live production would be transmitted at 21:15 on 5XX Daventry, that it was a One Act play by the author of “French Leave,” “Eight o’Clock”- two plays that had enjoyed theatrical success in the West End of London.
The director and producer R. E. Jeffrey, was the BBC’s recently appointed first head and editor of drama productions.
The Dweller In The Darkness was one of two plays ‘especially written for the B.B.C. for Radio Transmission.’ The other play was Entertaining Mr Waddington, a comedy in One Act by Vernon Bartlett.
The Dweller In The Darkness was produced and broadcast at least twelve times up until 1932 by BBC radio stations and services around the country.
It is also significant that the cast includes the actress and writer Mabel Constanduros, recently recruited by R.E. Jeffrey into the BBC’s London 2LO repertory company of resident actors specialising in performing for radio.
They would be pioneering the art of audio drama performance in the BBC’s radio studios at their London centre, Savoy Hill on the Thames Embankment adjacent to Waterloo Bridge.
The cast was: Mrs Vyner- Mabel Constanduros; Phillis Vyner- Phyllis Panting; Henry- Raymond Trafford; Mr Mortimer- Henry Oscar; Mr Vyner- Gordon Douglas; and Professor Urquhart- Ashton Pearse.
The play’s script was not preserved by the BBC for its archives and would not be found in the play library at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre. However, Berkeley as a professional writer realised it was marketable for amateur dramatic societies and regional repertory.
Consequently it was published by H.F.W. Deane and sons and the very rare copy in the Kultura Press archives was being sold for one shilling and 9 old pence.
Berkeley would go on to create more landmarks in sound drama; in particular The White Château broadcast on Armistice Night that year and becoming the first specially commissioned full length radio play and the first to be published in book form.
But the relationship between Berkeley and the BBC would break down when they refused to produce his 1927 play Machines which was a political script challenging the ethics of capitalism and dramatising actual members of the political parties; albeit with fictional names.
This very rare booklet play script cost 1 shilling and 9 old pence to buy early twentieth century. When acquired from a rare book dealer in January 2007, it cost £85- which the Bank of England inflation calculator gives a present value of £143.85.
It has been put online for public historical interest so it can be accessible to radio scholars and students.
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages two and three
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages Four and Five
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages Six and Seven
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages Eight and Nine
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages Ten and Eleven
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages Twelve and Thirteen
The Dweller In The Darkness Pages Fourteen and Fifteen
The Dweller In The Darkness Page Sixteen
Reginald Berkeley 1890 to 1935
Back cover of The Dweller In The Darkness by Reginal Berkeley
Archive and notes curated by Professor Tim Crook
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