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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Against the background of a radio station, this new play tells the story of an audacious theft, but the process of discovery calls into play all the oral qualities of the radio drama in a manner surprising and ingenious.'
Source:
'The Crime with 200,000 Witnesses', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 6 May 1937, p.16.
Notes
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Note on naming and re-broadcast:
It is possible that An Experiment in Acoustics (first broadcast in 1936) and The Crime with 200,000 Witnesses (first broadcast in 1937) are the same radio play, broadcast under different titles. At present, the only argument in favour of their being the same work is a single advertisement in the Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate that describes An Experiment in Acoustics as a 'crime with 200,000 witnesses' (see 'Crime with 200,000 Witnesses', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 25 February 1937, p.10).
However, a later article in the same newspaper describes The Crime with 200,000 Witnesses as a drama based around an 'audacious theft', which does not seem to match the synopsis of An Experiment in Acoustics (see 'The Crime with 200,000 Witnesses', Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 6 May 1937, p.16).
In the absence of more definitive information, AustLit treats the two works as discrete and any overlap in the terminology as coincidental (or perhaps inspirational).
Production Details
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Broadcast on 2FC (later Radio National) on Thursday 6 May 1937, between 9:15 and 10:10pm.
Producer: Harry Graham.
