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Job

Wireless Weekly 20 Sept 1941
Genre	drama
Running time	60 mins (8:15 pm – 9:15 pm)
Country of origin	Australia
Language(s)	English
Home station	2FC
Written by	Edmund Barclay
Recording studio	Sydney
Original release	25 June 1939

Job is a 1939 Australian radio play by Edmund Barclay performed on the Australian Broadcasting Commission. It is an adaptation of the Book of Job.

It was one of a series of adaptations Barclay did on older works - others included Pilgrim's Progress, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Wild Ass's Skin.

The production was much acclaimed; Leslie Rees felt Job was among Barclay's finest adaptations. He had earlier called the play "an eloquent and powerful piece of work. No doubt it will frighten the Woolacotts off the National wavelengths, but the sort of listener who enjoyed The Fire on the Snow — and they are legion - will appreciate the pathos, dignity and great human triumph of this drama."

The play was produced again in 1941.

Premise

"The drama of Job opens with a prologue in the mouth of a narrator, and then passes to a council held in Heaven. Enters Satan, and Jehovah specially questions him concerning Job, the pattern of men Satan is given permission to put Job to the trial of adversity, and so the drama moves to the climax where Jehovah answers Job from out of the whirlwind. Says a great scholar: It (the story of Job) is eternal, illimitable. Its scope is the relation between God and' man. It is a vast liberation, a great gaol-delivery of the spirit of man; nay, rather a great acquittal."

References

1. "Sunday .... June 25", Wireless Weekly, June 21, 1939, retrieved 5 February 2024 – via Trove
2. "Variety of Plays on the Air". Sunday Mail. No. 477. 11 June 1939. p. 29. Retrieved 5 February 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
3. Rees, Leslie (1953). Towards an Australian Drama. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. p. 101.
4. "Plays of the Air Patience and the Playwright", ABC Weekly, 20 September 1941, retrieved 5 February 2024 – via Trove
5. "Sunday September 21", Wireless Weekly, September 20, 1941, retrieved 5 February 2024 – via Trove
6. "Book of Job in Play Form", Wireless Weekly, September 20, 1941, retrieved 5 February 2024 – via Trove
7. "'Book of Job' Will Be Dramatised". The Mail. Vol. 28, no. 1,413. Adelaide. 24 June 1939. p. 12. Retrieved 5 February 2024 – via National Library of Australia.

• 1939 Australian radio dramas
• Radio plays by Edmund Barclay
• 1941 Australian radio dramas
• Book of Job
• Australian religious radio dramas