Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
This is an enjoyable production of the book by Robert Louis Stevenson, dramatised for radio by Yvonne Antrobus.
It is directed by Claire Grove
BBC Radio 4 The Saturday Play Feb 3, 2007
It will be available to Listen Again on The Saturday Play web page through Friday February 9, 2007.
It's funny in New York there is a theme restaurant that the tourists take the kiddies too. It's called Jerkyll & Hyde.
It's not the first time that quite serious, adult, literature having to do with moral and psychological issues has been turned into some form entertainment for children. Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.
In that way I think some depth, art, of these things is stripped away.
Yet in another way they become bigger things. They turn into modern, fairy tales, folk tales and maybe the depth remains and is somehow transferred even in the bare bones of the stories.
Frankenstein: Become god-like and think you can create life. Then weird stuff can happen that you didn't anticipate. You ain't so smart as you might think are you.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Mind and body altering substances can be fun and very interesting. But. . .
I'm going to have to read the novel one day. I was quite fascinated by the play. The concept of attempting it integrate the good and bad side of ones personality is just great.
He drinks the stuff and feels free form his repression, guilt. It's just a great drug abuse melodrama and I'm quite fond of the genre. I recently watched a 1980s cocaine movie with James Woods called The Boost. Same deal.
These things must be big fun to act in. Adam Godley in the lead role gets to really chew the microphone.
Showing posts with label BBC Radio 4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC Radio 4. Show all posts
Monday, February 5, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Daybreak
Daybreak
a radio play by Tom Ray
At the outset this play has a Weird Tale, Twilight Zone feel to it. But there is more to it than just that.
Aint no sunshine when she is gone, or at least that's what appears to be the situation through most of the play.
It is the story of a couple. We hear flashbacks to earlier points in the 14 year marriage. The marriage has failed in light of the death of their only baby at birth. Lisa has left Phil and all is darkness now for the both of them. All is darkness quite literally. The two have one more confrontation as she returns to pick up the wardrobe that she needs.
Daybreak is a very good play. It is not at all a straight forward narrative. It contains symbolic or allegorical elements. This is an art play that does not fail to entertain and enthrall. It is beautifully rendered by Marshall Lancaster as Phil and Loraine Coady as Lisa. Mr. Lancaster's Phil carries the weight of the production and his low key, yet emotional performance is pitch perfect and really serves the material well. Producer/director Kate Chapman mounts a production rich in subtle and effective ambient music that heightens the emotional atmosphere while giving the text room and trusting it to ultimately make the show.
The play by Tom Ray is deeply thought provoking. Is the lack of light the loss of love, or the loss of honesty, the will, desire, and where with all to come out of hiding, face the truth and move on?
A little research on Tom Ray shows that he is a man who has had to face the darkness and crawl out of the closet if he wished to survive. We can be glad that he did and that he has shown us the way of the truth and the light through his work.
Hear Daybreak at the BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play web page where it will be available through February 1, 2007 by clicking on the Friday button.
a radio play by Tom Ray
At the outset this play has a Weird Tale, Twilight Zone feel to it. But there is more to it than just that.
Aint no sunshine when she is gone, or at least that's what appears to be the situation through most of the play.
It is the story of a couple. We hear flashbacks to earlier points in the 14 year marriage. The marriage has failed in light of the death of their only baby at birth. Lisa has left Phil and all is darkness now for the both of them. All is darkness quite literally. The two have one more confrontation as she returns to pick up the wardrobe that she needs.
Daybreak is a very good play. It is not at all a straight forward narrative. It contains symbolic or allegorical elements. This is an art play that does not fail to entertain and enthrall. It is beautifully rendered by Marshall Lancaster as Phil and Loraine Coady as Lisa. Mr. Lancaster's Phil carries the weight of the production and his low key, yet emotional performance is pitch perfect and really serves the material well. Producer/director Kate Chapman mounts a production rich in subtle and effective ambient music that heightens the emotional atmosphere while giving the text room and trusting it to ultimately make the show.
The play by Tom Ray is deeply thought provoking. Is the lack of light the loss of love, or the loss of honesty, the will, desire, and where with all to come out of hiding, face the truth and move on?
A little research on Tom Ray shows that he is a man who has had to face the darkness and crawl out of the closet if he wished to survive. We can be glad that he did and that he has shown us the way of the truth and the light through his work.
Hear Daybreak at the BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play web page where it will be available through February 1, 2007 by clicking on the Friday button.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
A review of Immigrants
Immigrants
A radio play by John P Rooney
BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play January 15, 2007
Available on "Listen Again" RealAudio internet stream(One might have to click on "Listen on a stand alone player" to get the stream clip to go.) through Jan 21, 2007
This is a period piece, a play about three young Irish men in Belfast in the 1966. They see their prospects as rather slim unemployed at home. They find that they can get assisted passage to Australia which they don't have to repay if they stay two years. So they set off to seek their fortune. They go via a ship. A trip that must take a very long time. But, no matter, that is not the business of this play. It only has 45 minutes to tell the story of two years in Australia so we get there pretty quickly and it is there that the interesting drama really begins. What unfolds is a more or less universal immigrant story. They have a rather hard time finding decent work and end up falling in with a rather nasty exploitive contractor. So off the three of them go with this man and find themselves in a very rough situation with dangerous work. They end up splitting off in ways that will not be told here so as not to spoil the enjoyment of the story.
The play brings up several issues. The plight of newcomers who find themselves vulnerable to exploitation being only one if them. That is obvious and of course continues today all over the world. At least the young men in the play had some sort of papers, they were not illegal. I don't suppose that Australia is so open to uneducated, unskilled newcomers as it was 40 years ago. And yet even with that they find it very hard, find themselves entrapped in backbreaking, dangerous work. This brought to mind the plight of women who find themselves going for an offer of a new life out of misery and end up as sex slaves in the new land with little recourse to do much about it. This sort of thing goes on today all over our glorious modern world. Slavery lives today.
Another issue is who become the volunteer immigrants. True it is often the unemployed, but the young men in the play didn't have to set off to the new land. Surely there were thousands of others in a similar situation back home who chose to remain do to ties with family or just not really being the adventurous sort. The men in the play were self selected. It is the self selected adventurous ones who set off, leave home regardless of relational ties and take off. And who are these people who ended up making modern industrial nations out of the former tribal close to nature lands of Australia or North America?
Are they the most aggressive, the most yearning of their breed? Are they ones who built the (dangerous?) superpower of the current USA? Are they all adventurous young men seeking their fortune, traveling far to achieve it and not too concerned in the end who they have to push out of the way or kill to get it and keep it?
Some of these issues of the American character are addressed in American Mania a book by Peter C. Whybrow. It's an interesting read.
Immigrants brushes up against these issues in this very entertaining and personal coming of age adventure play. It's a fast 45 minutes and worth the listen.
A radio play by John P Rooney
BBC Radio 4 The Afternoon Play January 15, 2007
Available on "Listen Again" RealAudio internet stream(One might have to click on "Listen on a stand alone player" to get the stream clip to go.) through Jan 21, 2007
This is a period piece, a play about three young Irish men in Belfast in the 1966. They see their prospects as rather slim unemployed at home. They find that they can get assisted passage to Australia which they don't have to repay if they stay two years. So they set off to seek their fortune. They go via a ship. A trip that must take a very long time. But, no matter, that is not the business of this play. It only has 45 minutes to tell the story of two years in Australia so we get there pretty quickly and it is there that the interesting drama really begins. What unfolds is a more or less universal immigrant story. They have a rather hard time finding decent work and end up falling in with a rather nasty exploitive contractor. So off the three of them go with this man and find themselves in a very rough situation with dangerous work. They end up splitting off in ways that will not be told here so as not to spoil the enjoyment of the story.
The play brings up several issues. The plight of newcomers who find themselves vulnerable to exploitation being only one if them. That is obvious and of course continues today all over the world. At least the young men in the play had some sort of papers, they were not illegal. I don't suppose that Australia is so open to uneducated, unskilled newcomers as it was 40 years ago. And yet even with that they find it very hard, find themselves entrapped in backbreaking, dangerous work. This brought to mind the plight of women who find themselves going for an offer of a new life out of misery and end up as sex slaves in the new land with little recourse to do much about it. This sort of thing goes on today all over our glorious modern world. Slavery lives today.
Another issue is who become the volunteer immigrants. True it is often the unemployed, but the young men in the play didn't have to set off to the new land. Surely there were thousands of others in a similar situation back home who chose to remain do to ties with family or just not really being the adventurous sort. The men in the play were self selected. It is the self selected adventurous ones who set off, leave home regardless of relational ties and take off. And who are these people who ended up making modern industrial nations out of the former tribal close to nature lands of Australia or North America?
Are they the most aggressive, the most yearning of their breed? Are they ones who built the (dangerous?) superpower of the current USA? Are they all adventurous young men seeking their fortune, traveling far to achieve it and not too concerned in the end who they have to push out of the way or kill to get it and keep it?
Some of these issues of the American character are addressed in American Mania a book by Peter C. Whybrow. It's an interesting read.
Immigrants brushes up against these issues in this very entertaining and personal coming of age adventure play. It's a fast 45 minutes and worth the listen.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A review of Glass Houses
He said, She said.
Glass Houses
a radio play Colin Teevan
As we peer in at them it appears that they were once a happy couple. They both agree on that point. In this play we hear form both sides in two cross-cut monologues. Wife, perhaps to a journalist sometime after the fact. Husband, into a cassette audio tape recorder.
Where did it all go so bad? With the coming of the children? Did the problems, the games, really start over the accounting of family expenses? Didn't they always play power games? Didn't they get off on them at one time? Did the games get out of hand? Is the ultimate result just the last more, the last play, in the game? Is it the ultimate move or does it just appear that it is? Who lives in the Glass House? Husband? Wife? The both of them? We, the listeners? Who would we throw the stones at? Do we have any right to throw any? Is it possible to see clearly into a glass house? Did he go mad? Did it have to do with being on the treadmill to provide for the middle-class lifestyle that once had them so envied? Was she lying and cheating all along? Did the children just become a possession the fight over, just mere pawns in the games? Is it all a bluff in the end?
This play by Colin Teevan is an absolute mess of he said, she said. I'm not saying that Mr. Teevans' writing is a mess. I think his writing is spot on. What I'm saying is that it presents the mess of a love, a marriage, a family gone very wrong in such a way that it is impossible to get a solid, clear picture of who, if any single one, is at fault for the disaster. That it is a disaster for all involved is undisputable. That we can make heads or tails of why and who's to blame is impossible. This is the most real and illuminating aspect of the play. It points to the fact that it is very difficult, virtually impossible to make out what exactly happens in a relationship from the outside based on the testimony of the two people involved. They blame each other. But are they even clear as to who is at fault, or does it just come down to getting the outside, the law on their side to retain possession?
This BBC Radio 4 presentation of The Friday Play is very strong stuff. It is not recommended for those going through a difficult divorce. It is not a very good date play. It is not something to put on as light entertainment while you cuddle up with the one you love before the fireplace. It is harsh, angry, sad, troubling, but also devilishly clever and delightfully murky. Only two voices are heard through the hour. Husband is played by Greg Hicks. Wife by Clare Higgins. Both are excellent. Although I have no criticism of Mr. Hicks work here, I can't help but wonder how differently the drama would have felt if Husband was played slightly more toned down. I wonder if that might have done more to highlight the ambiguity of the piece. This ambiguity is what I love most about it. In the end I don't really know what went on with these two.
Of course the real star of this piece is the author Colin Teevan . He presents, doesn't tell too much, steps back, and allows the listener to do the rest, the listener is left to be the ultimate judge. I shirk the responsibility. I can't make a judgment in the end. I'm glad I'm not some divorce judge who has to figure these two out.
The only judgment I can make is a very easy one. This is very solid, very dark, very troubling, very hard hitting and thoughtful entertainment. Good show.
The play was directed by David Hunter with tasteful and effective music cues throughout.
But note: Glass Houses is available to "Listen Again" via The Friday Play page until January 18, 2007. I would advise you not to read the description of the play. Fortunately I didn't. I just clicked on the Listen Again button. I think the description is spoiling and misleading. You've been warned.
Glass Houses
a radio play Colin Teevan
As we peer in at them it appears that they were once a happy couple. They both agree on that point. In this play we hear form both sides in two cross-cut monologues. Wife, perhaps to a journalist sometime after the fact. Husband, into a cassette audio tape recorder.
Where did it all go so bad? With the coming of the children? Did the problems, the games, really start over the accounting of family expenses? Didn't they always play power games? Didn't they get off on them at one time? Did the games get out of hand? Is the ultimate result just the last more, the last play, in the game? Is it the ultimate move or does it just appear that it is? Who lives in the Glass House? Husband? Wife? The both of them? We, the listeners? Who would we throw the stones at? Do we have any right to throw any? Is it possible to see clearly into a glass house? Did he go mad? Did it have to do with being on the treadmill to provide for the middle-class lifestyle that once had them so envied? Was she lying and cheating all along? Did the children just become a possession the fight over, just mere pawns in the games? Is it all a bluff in the end?
This play by Colin Teevan is an absolute mess of he said, she said. I'm not saying that Mr. Teevans' writing is a mess. I think his writing is spot on. What I'm saying is that it presents the mess of a love, a marriage, a family gone very wrong in such a way that it is impossible to get a solid, clear picture of who, if any single one, is at fault for the disaster. That it is a disaster for all involved is undisputable. That we can make heads or tails of why and who's to blame is impossible. This is the most real and illuminating aspect of the play. It points to the fact that it is very difficult, virtually impossible to make out what exactly happens in a relationship from the outside based on the testimony of the two people involved. They blame each other. But are they even clear as to who is at fault, or does it just come down to getting the outside, the law on their side to retain possession?
This BBC Radio 4 presentation of The Friday Play is very strong stuff. It is not recommended for those going through a difficult divorce. It is not a very good date play. It is not something to put on as light entertainment while you cuddle up with the one you love before the fireplace. It is harsh, angry, sad, troubling, but also devilishly clever and delightfully murky. Only two voices are heard through the hour. Husband is played by Greg Hicks. Wife by Clare Higgins. Both are excellent. Although I have no criticism of Mr. Hicks work here, I can't help but wonder how differently the drama would have felt if Husband was played slightly more toned down. I wonder if that might have done more to highlight the ambiguity of the piece. This ambiguity is what I love most about it. In the end I don't really know what went on with these two.
Of course the real star of this piece is the author Colin Teevan . He presents, doesn't tell too much, steps back, and allows the listener to do the rest, the listener is left to be the ultimate judge. I shirk the responsibility. I can't make a judgment in the end. I'm glad I'm not some divorce judge who has to figure these two out.
The only judgment I can make is a very easy one. This is very solid, very dark, very troubling, very hard hitting and thoughtful entertainment. Good show.
The play was directed by David Hunter with tasteful and effective music cues throughout.
But note: Glass Houses is available to "Listen Again" via The Friday Play page until January 18, 2007. I would advise you not to read the description of the play. Fortunately I didn't. I just clicked on the Listen Again button. I think the description is spoiling and misleading. You've been warned.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Children of Men & The Real Thing
Someone will have to make a comment and tell me how it came out in the end. I was so bored that I didn't want to have to sit through the last 50 minutes of this movie.
It could have been a worthwhile entertainment had the filmmakers thought of giving me something to care about. Maybe I'm too demanding or easily distracted by the guy behind me with the crinkly brown paper bag, but, silly me, I want a character or a concept or a story I can care about. In Children of Men I found none of these. It was some silly set-up about how there had not been any children born on earth for 19 years. I don't know why this was such a problem since there were all these illegal alien people running around this 2027 England attacking motor vehicles as they drove by. Actually that was the best part of the movie, when we got two or three rides in cars or busses and the people outside threw stuff at us. If only there where more of this.
There was some droopy guy, played by a sleepy Clive Owen. He was our hero I guess, but I didn't give a damn about him since I was told nothing about him really I guess I was supposed to care about him because he was a friend of some boring old hippy played by Michael Caine. Good old Caine was the only alive person in the picture at least as far as I got in it. Actually I left after he got shot and killed, but he was a stupid old hippy anyway and there was no reason I should care about him either. Besides he was a bloody pot dealer and who could care about a person like that? There is a pregnant woman and they are trying to get her to "The Human Project" so it was going to be another 40 minutes of fleeing from the bad guys through stressed sets and then there would be some sort of birth and mankind would be saved. Except I didn't give a damn if any of these people or the crappy world the lived in got saved actually I would have rather they rode around in the cars more in reel one and then all got shot up end of movie and I could go home. Oh yeah, Julianne Moore is in it too, sort of. She contracts a bloody neck and gets to go away to work on some better movie somewhere else. JM fans who go to the movie to see her will be disappointed that she got to go home early like Caine and me. She even left before me and Caine. I doubt if she put in a full week on the project unless she comes back at the end or something. She does do a dumb stunt with a ping pong ball. It would have been a good role for a redheaded trained seal.
But go see the movie. You will probably think it was really profound and the crappy sets really cool. I'm just an old crank and, well, a bit of a snob in that I sort of want entertainment to be, well entertaining, somehow interesting, rather than just boring.
I know I'm not a big movie fan. I don't live to see moving images on the screen. I don't get all excited if I see movie violence unless the people in the movie mean something to me. And I'm not one who demands that a movie be upbeat. I LOVE downer movies, but good one's like Hopper's old Out of the Blue. Besides I saw an uplifting end coming in this one and I just knew that would be too unbearable. Anyway, I wasted enough time typing about this piece of crap, this waste of someone's millions of dollars. Had the director hired someone to write a screenplay rather than trying to do it himself. . .
I could have been that I was spoiled earlier today when I heard a great BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. Indeed it was the real thing. It was an hour and a half of masterfully written and performed human drama. Here I didn't even need to care about the people in the play. The writing was so clever, so beautiful, so spot on that it provided me with completely fulfilling and thoughtful entertainment. I won't bother telling you to listen to it while it is still available on the BBC Radio 4 Saturday Play website until Jan 5, 2007. Because you don't listen to audio drama. You want pictures. You want everything handed to you in a really graphic way like in a movie or a TV show. You don't want to bother with old fashioned forms like reading, or radio plays. Fine! what do I care.
If some reader or radio fan wanders here and actually reads this, Well, of course I didn't mean you, comrade, I was just trying to antagonize the masses. I know I don't really have any readers anyway so it doesn't matter what I type and that's the way I like it. So bug off!
It could have been a worthwhile entertainment had the filmmakers thought of giving me something to care about. Maybe I'm too demanding or easily distracted by the guy behind me with the crinkly brown paper bag, but, silly me, I want a character or a concept or a story I can care about. In Children of Men I found none of these. It was some silly set-up about how there had not been any children born on earth for 19 years. I don't know why this was such a problem since there were all these illegal alien people running around this 2027 England attacking motor vehicles as they drove by. Actually that was the best part of the movie, when we got two or three rides in cars or busses and the people outside threw stuff at us. If only there where more of this.
There was some droopy guy, played by a sleepy Clive Owen. He was our hero I guess, but I didn't give a damn about him since I was told nothing about him really I guess I was supposed to care about him because he was a friend of some boring old hippy played by Michael Caine. Good old Caine was the only alive person in the picture at least as far as I got in it. Actually I left after he got shot and killed, but he was a stupid old hippy anyway and there was no reason I should care about him either. Besides he was a bloody pot dealer and who could care about a person like that? There is a pregnant woman and they are trying to get her to "The Human Project" so it was going to be another 40 minutes of fleeing from the bad guys through stressed sets and then there would be some sort of birth and mankind would be saved. Except I didn't give a damn if any of these people or the crappy world the lived in got saved actually I would have rather they rode around in the cars more in reel one and then all got shot up end of movie and I could go home. Oh yeah, Julianne Moore is in it too, sort of. She contracts a bloody neck and gets to go away to work on some better movie somewhere else. JM fans who go to the movie to see her will be disappointed that she got to go home early like Caine and me. She even left before me and Caine. I doubt if she put in a full week on the project unless she comes back at the end or something. She does do a dumb stunt with a ping pong ball. It would have been a good role for a redheaded trained seal.
But go see the movie. You will probably think it was really profound and the crappy sets really cool. I'm just an old crank and, well, a bit of a snob in that I sort of want entertainment to be, well entertaining, somehow interesting, rather than just boring.
I know I'm not a big movie fan. I don't live to see moving images on the screen. I don't get all excited if I see movie violence unless the people in the movie mean something to me. And I'm not one who demands that a movie be upbeat. I LOVE downer movies, but good one's like Hopper's old Out of the Blue. Besides I saw an uplifting end coming in this one and I just knew that would be too unbearable. Anyway, I wasted enough time typing about this piece of crap, this waste of someone's millions of dollars. Had the director hired someone to write a screenplay rather than trying to do it himself. . .
I could have been that I was spoiled earlier today when I heard a great BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. Indeed it was the real thing. It was an hour and a half of masterfully written and performed human drama. Here I didn't even need to care about the people in the play. The writing was so clever, so beautiful, so spot on that it provided me with completely fulfilling and thoughtful entertainment. I won't bother telling you to listen to it while it is still available on the BBC Radio 4 Saturday Play website until Jan 5, 2007. Because you don't listen to audio drama. You want pictures. You want everything handed to you in a really graphic way like in a movie or a TV show. You don't want to bother with old fashioned forms like reading, or radio plays. Fine! what do I care.
If some reader or radio fan wanders here and actually reads this, Well, of course I didn't mean you, comrade, I was just trying to antagonize the masses. I know I don't really have any readers anyway so it doesn't matter what I type and that's the way I like it. So bug off!
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