005 Contemporary Drama – New
This category was particularly strong this time around. I found Stream,
River, Sea by Peter Souter really affecting, which was a testament both to
the writing and to the excellent performances.
Bella (Juliet Stevenson) and Hugh (Alex Jennings) meet in the hospital
as their respective husband and mother are dying. Bella is deeply in love with her husband who
died much too young. Hugh has been
caring for his bedridden mother for twenty years. While Hugh’s role becomes someone to help
Bella get through her pain, Bella has to help Hugh live his life for the first
time. Bella’s daughter Daisy (Lizzy
Watts) is a typically acid-mouthed teenage brat, but by the end, they are a
content trio. The dark humor of the
scene in which Hugh and Bella encounter each other in the crematorium is funny
and poignant. The drama was directed by Gordon House.
Radio 1Xtra’s Quarter
Life Crisis by playwright Yolanda Mercy was a revelation. I thought it was
the perfect plug for the gap that I had been looking for—a radio drama that
appealed to the younger generation, was witty, well-written, and felt
authentic. It was also a natural fit for
Radio 1Xtra due to its ongoing hip hop soundtrack. Yolanda Mercy starred as a 25-year-old from
London who hasn’t quit grown up yet and is trying to figure out her place in
the world. She’s tired of zero-hour
contracts but isn’t ready to get married and settle down, like her cousin
Titi. She has to deal with the layers of
ancestry from her Nigerian family and that she was the only black person in her
Deptford university class. I felt like
everything Mercy said chimed with both the lives of my students, who are about
six years younger than 25, and myself, who is about ten years older. Quite a feat to be able to do that. The frankness about sex also seemed
authentic. I hope there is more to come
in this vein. It co-starred Jocelyn G
Essien, Barba Ayojude, Maya Watkins, Shalla Adubuse, Lily Bevin, Leke Adubayu,
Simon Akim Bumi, and Lola Aladeshli and was directed by Caroline Raphael.
I’m glad to see that Nick Warburton still has new tricks up
his sleeve. Oliver Park a really interesting take on the mockumentary. Nick Warburton is BBC Radio 4’s resident
Church of England writer, and given that he is a high-quality writer, he aids
the cause of Christianity when he writes thoughtful, original drama that is
highly attuned to what I consider to be the most important messages of
Christianity. I note that he has a
predilection for Easter stories rather than what, on radio, have tended to be
the more favored Christmas stories. Oliver Park sits well beside his
earlier excellent work, Witness,
which did for this generation what Dorothy Parker’s religious plays did for
hers. Oliver Park is presented as a documentary which looks back at a
fictional event in which a tense atmosphere in a south-eastern coastal town
blows apart during marches at Oliver Park, with the murky death of a peaceful
protester. You have your disciple
figure, your Mary Magdalene figure (Emerald O’Hanrahan), your Judas figure,
your King Herod figure, and your Caiaphas figure. The Jesus figure barely speaks—obviously,
he’s been killed and has done nothing so crass as rise literally from the
dead—which is in keeping with convention in religious radio dramas. The Jesus figure’s message of peace and
tolerance is a simple one, explicitly linked to refugees, and Sam Dale as the
head of a vigilante group of “neighborhood watch” who are in no mood to
tolerate refugees or protesters, is absolutely chilling. I understand it was a largely improvised
performance, and it sounds very authentic.
It also starred Tracy Wiles, Arian Nik, Michael Imerson, and Mark
Dowd. It was directed by Paul Arnold.
The Deletion
Committee was very much in Mark Lawson’s style, topical and
provocative. An unnamed waxworks, a
thinly disguised Madame Tussaud’s, is having a board meeting in which it will
be decided which figures are deleted and melted down. What is the criteria for deletion? Well, if some #MeToo allegations have been
made against the figure in question, down to Germaine Greer for saying
insensitive things about trans people.
The new member, young, black, and female Gemma (Ferruche Offia), is all
for a policy of no tolerance; board member Abigail (Samantha Bond), a trendy
older journalist, is mostly in agreement with Gemma but occasionally and
secretly would like to agree with her colleague, lawyer Sam (Bill Paterson),
who makes every deletion a debate. Sam
is no dinosaur, but he brings up thoughtful and relevant questions about guilty
until proven innocent, whether Twitter is the correct arena for assigning
guilt. Gemma also brings up good points
regarding the complicity of society in allowing destructive behavior over the
centuries. What are the answers? It’s hard to tell. The
Deletion Committee also starred Paul Freeman and Abram Rooney. It was directed by Eoin O’Callaghan.
I’m surprised to admit it, but Chopping Onions by Becky Prestwich made me cry. I thought from the description (perhaps I
didn’t read it carefully enough) that this was going to be a comedy. Instead, it was a fraught and tense drama
about three generations of Jewish women.
Esther (Christine Cox) was the family matriarch, but after she has a
stroke, her daughter Ruth (Maureen Lipman) moves her into her own house. Ruth’s daughter Vanessa (Sarah Smart) is also
there with her baby Daniel. Due to the
stroke, Esther finds it difficult to make herself understood. Ruth is trying to make chicken soup, but her
mother is unable to keep out of the kitchen.
She tries to prepare Esther for the fact that Vanessa (who married a
non-Jew) wants Daniel to be christened.
Esther eventually escapes and goes back to her old house, in the process
making Vanessa absolutely crazy as Esther takes baby Daniel with her. The only other speaking character in this
drama is the befuddled taxi driver (Sushil Chudisama). It was directed by Pauline Harris.
Not sure how I missed the previous five series of The Interrogation. I’m glad I heard episodes Ross and Jack, as they’re
very well-written. Apparently, when
first DCI Matthews (Kenneth Cranham) and DS Armitage (Alex Lanipekin) first
were teamed together, they disliked each other.
Well, by now that’s long gone. The
personal story that occasionally comes out of this trio of dramas regards
Armitage’s incipient fatherhood. Cranham
has a voice that can be turned to hero or villain, at least on radio, which
must be excellent fun for him. I wasn’t,
of course, familiar with the setup of the episodes, so I was very impressed
with the first offering. Each episode
begins with the monologue from the perpetrator, so once you know the formula,
you aren’t necessarily in suspense for a whodunit—it’s why they did it and
what, exactly, did they do? Matthews and
Armitage give the impression that they would be extremely annoying to actually
be interviewed by, as they have the effective technique down like a pair of
sharks. It’s interesting to see how they
alter this from interviewee to interviewee.
Ross was dynamite; the
listeners become detectives, too, unravelling a case when a diagonal approach
is the only effective one. Williams’ ear for dialogue is second-to-none, making
each new character sound authentic. Ross
(Billy Seymour) is a young man in prison.
He has poured scalding hot water on another prisoner, but was that for whom
the hot water was actually intended? The
drama also starred Rupert Halliday-Evans.
Jack was also very good. There
is a similar sleight-of-hand at work here as in the last episode. Jack (Michael Schaffer) gets pulled in
because apparently he was shoplifting. A
lot of time and effort is expended on whether Jack was actually intending to
shoplifting or whether it was a mistake.
Both stories were directed by Mary Peate.
19 Weeks by Emily
Steele also made me cry. In this very
intimate and rather warts-and-all drama (which is highly radiogenic), Steele
(Eve Myles) is a journalist in her thirties with one son already, Frank. Her pregnancy with her second child is
murderous, with her being incredibly sick all the time. Chris, her husband, a silent character whose
dialogue is reported via Emily (an interesting device) works but is caring,
always trying to help Emily during her pregnancy. Living in Australia, they do lots of tests,
some of which they have to pay for, as they eventually find out that the child
is likely going to have developmental problems, just like Emily’s uncle. Emily is determined not to end up like her
grandmother, who lavished her life on bringing up a developmentally disabled
child. It’s late (19 weeks) when the
tests point in all likelihood to this possibility, and Emily describes the
painful and long process of the termination, maturely, with vulnerability, and
a great deal of honesty. There are some
excellent moments here—Emily dreads telling her mother about the decision given
her mother used to campaign against abortion, but she finds her mother has
changed. I was crying not because Emily
decided to have the abortion, but I was just sad about the whole story, the
pain and suffering so many of the characters went through. Eve Myles did an excellent job, as did the
other actors, who included Vanessa Hier, Mafreeda Hayes, Carlie Hughes, and
Milo Robinson. It was directed by Helen
Perry.
