Popular Culture Review Vol. 26, No. 2, Summer 2015 | Page 53

Popular Culture Review and extradiegetically; they are individually recalling the music in their minds while we, the viewers, are hearing the music outside of the action, albeit only immediately after the removal of the needle from the record, with Britten’s “Playful Pizzicato” from the Simple Symphony (1934) taking the extradiegetic character-narrator who engages both the audience and the other characters in Our Town. The narrator not only engages the other characters, he also has the ability to predict the future and move back and forth through time. For instance, in this short movement the narrator points to the plane which is about to land and deliver the mail (which Suzy has already received in the previous scene) and tells us before the fact that Black Beacon Sound, where he is standing in the last scene of the movement, is “famous for the ferocious and well-documented storm which will strike . . . As with the opening scene, each shot is impeccably f Ʌ