Quarter 1 Reviews- 006 Contemporary Drama- Old

006 Contemporary Drama – Old 

In early 2018, I was catching up on all the drama I’d missed from the end of the previous year. I was feeling a bit disappointed that the seasonal offerings for 2017 were so paltry, then I heard Christmas Shopping, a sublime comedy/drama/romance from 1997.  Weaned as I had been on a diet of shop floor assistants from The Jack Benny Show in episodes titled “Christmas Shopping,” this was a very different kettle of fish.  It was beautifully written, beautifully performed, gorgeously romantic, and wonderfully seasonal.  James (Toby Jones) and Frances (Sarah Jane Holm) don’t know each other.  They both go Christmas shopping a few days before Christmas.  James’ list is typed by his PA Jackie (Carolyn Jones).  He attempts to find an anti-macassar for his aunt Kay, before Frances convinces him Kay would rather have a doll.  After James and Frances keep meeting throughout their shopping, they finally decide to have lunch together.  They are attracted to each other, but Frances is not over her ex, Michael (Adam Blakeney), who dumped her for another woman (in flashback we find out it’s because she “let herself go”).  James invites Frances to lunch on Christmas Eve, but she is essentially going to stalk Michael and see if he shows up at the usual place they used to have lunch.  Will Frances learn to forget Michael?  Will James be able to win his way to Frances’ heart?  How will they spend Christmas?  I won’t ruin it for you, but I will say I adored this drama.  It was written by Max Hillman and directed by Cathryn Horn.  

A series about coming back to different parts of the UK included Take Me to Redcar and Take Me to Haford Owen. Take Me to Redcar by Sarah McDonald Hughes had a really convincing voice as told by young people.  It was powerful and gave a great sense of place.  Fiona (Therese Meade) is taking her boyfriend Danny (John Cattral) to her hometown of Redcar to meet her parents.  They are both in their first year of university (in Manchester).  Danny is very cool and cynical, about to drop out of university due to problems at home (his father wants to move to Ireland to be with a girlfriend, leaving Danny to pay the rent on the flat while trying to study full-time).  When Fiona and Danny arrive in Redcar, they are astonished to find it deserted, all the shops boarded up.  Eventually they make their way to the beach, where a whale has been beached.  They fall in with the rescue efforts, led by Fiona’s dad Gary (Steven Hillman) who lost his job when the local foundry closed in the last year but has gotten very involved in lifeboat rescuing charities.  Fiona’s mom Michelle (Melissa Jane Syndan) works in an award-winning chip shop. Will Fiona and Danny’s relationship survive? This was sensitively and boldly written; a great drama for radio.  It was directed by Charlotte Riches in 2013.

Meic Povey wrote his version, Take Me to Hafod Owen, also in 2013.  It’s to his credit that I didn’t recognize Richard Elfyn in the lead role as Ellis, a middle-aged man returning under a cloud to his childhood house in Hafod Owen, in Welsh-speaking mountainous mid-Wales. His home now a pub, predictably run by an insensitive Englishwoman, Nikki (Sue Roderick).  In Hafod Owen, Ellis meets his old flame Gwyneth (Christine Bottomley) and old frenemy Davie (Iwan Hugh Dafyd).  Ellis wants to buy his house back and restore it.  He is also deeply embroiled in problems from his past, for example his unresolved relationship with Gwyneth, and the fact that Davie’s father sacked Ellis’ father which caused them to move away.  This is a nicely produced play with excellent music and some memorable scenes, including Ellis and Davie scrabbling around in a cave in the mountains in a thunderstorm.  It was directed by James Robinson.

Although we’d now consider it a period piece, Glasnost by consummate radio dramatist John Mortimer was contemporary when it was written, 1988.  It features one of my favorite radio performers, the late, great Anna Massey.  She plays Anthea Denham, one of a coterie of British writers invited to Soviet Russia.  Her very patronizing counterpart, Brian Worsford (Clive Merrison), was designed to set your teeth on edge—and he did.  More mellow was the senior member of the group, Charles Hathaway (Philip Voss).  As they explore what the Soviet state has to offer them—tours, queues, real booze at the foreigners’ hotel, disavowed prostitutes, the ballet—Brian displays his acidic wit at every turn.  Anthea falls for their guide, the delightful Vladimir Pinchevski (Boris Isarov), and it seems that their attraction is mutual.  However, is Vladimir what he seems?  Glasnost was directed by the legendary John Tydeman.

Quarter 1 Review- 002 Historial Drama- Old

002 Historical Drama – Old

Not too divorced from The Scarlet Pimpernel in time period and exuberance (and probably the writers’ social and political beliefs) was the delightfully over-the-top Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer, from 1995.  A massive production—you have to admire the actors for really going for it.  Sherry (Lord Sheringham, played by James Frain) is a bit of a fop and wastrel, who doesn’t come into his father’s fortune unless he marries.  So, his proposal rejected by childhood friend Isabella Milborne (Annabel Mulllion), he marries another childhood friend, the youthful orphan Hero Wantage (Elli Garnett), instead.  Hero loves Sherry, and for him it’s a marriage of convenience, but she is naïve, young, and artless (he calls her Kitten and Brat).  Her personality wins over Sherry’s friends including George, Gil, and Ferdy (Julian Rhind-Tutt).  The long-suffering George wants to marry Isabella, and meanwhile the dastardly rake Montagu Revesby goes around impregnating random women and leaving them and their babies to starve.  After a disagreement, Hero runs away from Sherry, hiding in Bath.  An unrecognizable Simon Russell Beale plays Jasper Tarleton, an older man who wants to run away with Hero, whom he takes for a single girl.  Revesby gets his come-uppance, Sherry and Hero reconcile, and George at last gets to marry Isabella.  Nothing much happens—and it’s far more about the lives of the 2% than Jane Austen—but the characters are a lot of fun. And oh yes, there is a pug, whom everyone calls odious.  Adapted by John Peacock, Friday’s Child also starred Nicholas Boulton, Mary Wimbush, Ian Hughes, Peter Kenny, Paul Panting, Cathy Sera, Susan Sheridan, Eva Stuart, Tessa Worsley, Jilly Bond, David Antrobus, and David Bannerman (!!).  

Yet again set in roughly the same time period, Young Coleridge is very different, indeed.  One of Martyn Wade’s earliest and most serious works, it stars Tom Wilkinson as the tortured, eponymous poet.  Young Coleridge is an attempt to get inside Coleridge’s head for a day, from when he wakes up the whole household in his house in Keswick with his opium-induced nightmares to when he needs opium that evening to help him sleep.  Coleridge is a complex, not entirely self-aware man, and his relationship with his wife Sara is fraught.  Care is taken in this story to help the listener understand that Coleridge puts impossible demands upon his wife and holds her to different standards than he does himself; at the same time, you do feel sorry for him, as he’d like to divorce her and marry his soulmate Asra (another Sara).  He also has complicated relationships with his friends, mainly due to ego and the fact that they are either more productive and more agreeable (Robert Southey) or more productive and more devilish but openly devilish (the nymphomaniac William Hazlitt).  Coleridge also has the tendency to say the wrong thing, despite having good intentions—such as continually bringing up the fact that Southey and his wife Edith have lost a child.  Added to this peculiar household, a holdover from Coleridge’s Panisocratic days, are extended relatives like Mrs Lovell.  I had never heard Tom Wilkinson on radio before, and unsurprisingly he did a very convincing job (though I did get distracted trying to match up the voice with the portrait I know of Coleridge, long hair and full lips).  Young Coleridge starred Jennie Stoller, Gary Bond, Christopher Good, Narissa Knights, Moira Leslie, Amanda Murray, Elizabeth Rider, Brian smith, Christopher Douglas, Elizabeth Lindsay, Ellen McIntosh, and was directed by Cherry Cookson in 1984. 

2018 Quarter 1 Review- 001 Historical Drama – New

Oh dear, only a month and a half late.

001 Historical Drama – New

Many years ago, I read The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, which I enjoyed, and I also really like the Broadway musical of the same name.  However, it took the radio adaptation to remind me what great fun the story is, though this new adaptation by Jonathan Holloway took pains to show the serious side of it, too.  James Purefoy is excellent as the foppish Percy Blakeney achieved through a larger-than-life loutish accent) and the Scarlet Pimpernel, a serious do-gooder.  The trouble is, Percy doesn’t really know who he is, much less who the Pimpernel is.  A chink in his armor shows through when Percy falls in love with the surprisingly artless Marguerite St Just (Sienna Guillory) who, just as breathlessly, falls in love with him.  Their marriage sours, however, when, back in England, Percy finds out that Marguerite denounced the St Cyr family and led to their execution—something the Scarlet Pimpernel was trying to prevent. Will Marguerite unknowingly betray her husband?  Will Percy learn to trust Marguerite again?  Chauvelin, Marguerite’s former lover and the righteous yet practical upholder of the French Republic, is after her and the Pimpernel.  While Chauvelin in the musical and Martin Shaw in the A&E mini-series both had some charm, this Chauvelin, played by Eric MacLennan, is cruel, without anything to recommend him aside from his tragic devotion to Marguerite.  He is less of a buffoon than in other Pimpernel iterations and very dangerous.  The story is told from the POV of the foppish and not-too-bright Andrew Ffoulkes (Enzo Cilenti), who without the aid of visuals comes off as a bit silly, despite the fact he is probably as handsome as Kevin from Ghostbusters.  This is a good storytelling device, as we would have real difficulty knowing what was going on (well, most people would) without his useful linking narration.  The music, by Sarah Llwellyn, is apparently there to bring the harder edge as it’s contemporary and synthesized, and for the most part it succeeds.  League of the Scarlet Pimpernel?  Oh please do!   It also starred Abby Wain, Graeme Rose, Mike Rogers, and James Camp. It was directed and produced by Jonathan Holloway and Sally Harrison.  Lud love me!