Tom Stoppard Radio Plays

NEW CD RELEASE, July 2012

The British Library is publishing a 5CD set entitled Tom Stoppard: Radio Plays, containing the original BBC broadcasts of four of his plays written specifically for radio: Albert’s Bridge, Artist Descending A Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died and In The Native State. The recordings are being released under license from the BBC and, with the exception of The Dog It Was That Died, this is the first time they have been made commercially available.

purchase details: Radio Plays is published by the British Library on 3 July 2012, price £40.00. The 5CD set is available from the British Library Shop (tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7735 / e-mail: bl-shop@bl.uk) and online at www.bl.uk/shop as well as other bookshops throughout the UK.

.....Besides his work for the theatre, Sir Tom Stoppard has written a number of original radio plays. The texts of these are collected in a volume published by Faber in 1990 (and updated in 1994 to include IN THE NATIVE STATE).

Stoppard began with two fifteen-minute plays included in the "Just Before Midnight" series of short late-night plays that ran for three months in 1964. THE DISSOLUTION OF DOMINIC BOOT charts swiftly bu decisively the progressive demoralisation of its wretched protagonist through a series of disastrous encounters: he ends in the rain, in tears and pyjamas. M IS FOR MOON AMONG OTHER THINGS is a duologue for a husband and wife whose thoughts interlock with their speeches. Among the 'other things' are the M to N section of an encyclopaedia and the film star Marilyn Munroe, whose death is reported in the course of the play.

IF YOU'RE GLAD, I'LL BE FRANK followed in 1966, a surreal farce in which the voice of the speaking clock becomes human and runs out of control. Timothy West plays Frank, a dogged naval officer who has recognised the voice as that of his wife Gladys. He embarks on a frantic mission to rescue her from the toils of the Post Office and the tyranny of the 'third stroke' (at which the time will be ...').

In ALBERT'S BRIDGE (1967), John Hurt plays Albert, who spends much of the time obsessively painting the railway bridge over Clufton Bay. The bridge comes to possess his mind, to the detriment of other areas of his life: the monotonous routine of painting both enslaves and liberates him. The play won two prizes and was often repeated. Paul Copley played the lead in a later production.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? (1971) takes a cynical view of an old boys' reunion, with Timothy West, again, and Carleton Hobbs in splendid form as a waspish old schoolmaster. John Wood plays the querulous outsider who proves, after all, not to have attended this particular alma mater. Hobbs also figures in ARTIST DESCENDING A STAIRCASE (1972), as one of three elderly artists united by lifelong friendship and some sort of collective guilt regarding the death of a blind woman, a contemporary whom they had befriended in their youth. Now one of their number has died, having fallen mysteriously to his death from an upstairs landing. The plays spins a complicated web of character and incident, at once enigmatic and playful, with much to tease the listener. Like much of Stoppard's work, it rewards careful listening.

THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED was broadcast in 1982 and was available for a time as a commercial BBC tape. It's a very funny play in which a disenchanted spy seeks to escape from his work with Intelligence by committing suicide. Dinsdale Landen plays him beautifully, and the exceptional cast includes Charles Gray as the smoothie from Q6; Penelope Keith as his horsey wife; Kenneth Cranham as the sad spy in the mackintosh; Maurice Denham as the Chief, all pipe and pomposity; and John le Mesurier, Stephen Murray and Betty Marsden as assorted inmates of a "funny farm" on the east coast.

Stoppard's most recent original play for radio is also his most substantial: IN THE NATIVE STATE, first broadcast in 1991. It is far and away his most significant achievement for the medium. He went on to adapt it for the stage with the new title INDIAN INK. The action alternates between the India of 1930 and the England of 1990, with two sisters and a father and son as protagonists. Felicity Kendal plays Flora Crowe, a gifted poet visiting India, where she has her portrait painted by a local artist (and where she dies prematurely). Sixty years later, in London, the artist's son visits Flora's younger sister, now an elderly woman, played with her usual command by Peggy Ashcroft. The play advances on these two fronts, combining the actual and the retrospective, each continually casting light on the other. The method is oblique, allowing the truth to emerge only gradually: we share in the young man's quest, as the past resonates through the present.

Several of Stoppard's stage plays have had radio productions, including his first, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, originally performed by the National theatre. This is the famous play in which the action of HAMLET takes place largely off-stage, while the Prince's hapless school friends twiddle their thumbs and toss coins to pass the time. It was broadcast in 1978 with Edward Petherbridge as Guildenstern, repeating his stage performance for the National. Freddie Jones delivers the part of the Player King with appropriate relish.

THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND, broadcast in 1979, offers a Stoppardian spoof of a traditional detective story, with a fogbound country house, an escaped homicidal lunatic and a bovine police officer with a sharper subordinate. The action is observed, as a play within the play, by two theatre critics, who lose their detachment as they too become involved in events of mounting extravagance and absurdity. NIGHT AND DAY was produced by the World Service in 1990 and later given on Radio 3. It is a savage, controlled pice, set in a troubled African state, where ambitious journalists vie for a scoop. The press is represented by a photographer and two foreign correspondents, none of whom fares particularly well (and one of them dies). Their trade comes under continued attack, chiefly from the wife of the resident mining engineer, who has been a victim of tabloid persecution. The defence is advanced by an idealistic young journalist as the price we have to pay for larger freedom. Between them lies the inescapable fact that information is necessary to a free society and that no tabloid excess is worse than its suppression. The play is powerfully and eloquently argued and it confronts the violence to which foreign correspondents undoubtedly succumb on occasion. It also gives penelope Wilton a wonderful part, written with considerable humour in a clever, cynical vein. Bored, bright, bitter and easily tempted by an attractive man, she even shares her thoughts with us. The actress plays her to the hilt, relishing every word.

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, BROADCAST IN 1991, is Stoppard's version of an original bythe Austrian dramatist Arthur Schnitzler (DER WEITE LAND). It's a polished, cynical play, set within a rigorously formal society, with codes that may not be violated with impunity. As often in such a context, it's the young and naive who truly suffer. Maureen O'Brien plays the maddening womanat the centre of the action in rather too breathless a style - a little of her gasping intensity goes a long way. Ronald Pickup brings his familiar distinction to the role of her implacable husband.

THE REAL THING, broadcast in 1992, caused concern among Stoppard's admirers when first staged in London but came into its own when revived fairly recently at the Donmar, where, in the old phrase, it took the town. It's a play about the nature of love - its fulfilment, its loss, its betrayal. The opening scene is illusive, in that it proves to be part of a play withing the play, launching the theme of adultery, but in a deceptive context. The rest is real life, in which adultery leads to cancelled marriages and new spouses for all four protagonists, two of whom marry each other. Their marriage becomes the focus of attention thereafter: it survives despite the activities of the wayward wife, who engages emotionally with all four men in the play. Emily Richard does her beautifully and Clive Francis carries with great assurance the long and demanding part of her amazingly articulate second husband.

ARCADIA is Stoppard's acknowledged masterpiece, a scintillating play in which - as in IN THE NATIVE STATE - present day researchers seek to find the truth about people and events from a former time - in this case, about 200 years earlier.It was broadcast by Radio 3 in the year of its first performance at the National Theatre, 1993. The action displays both past and present, opening in 1808 before switching to the 1990s. The listener learns the truth of both eras, but, predictably, the modern researchers construct a false picture of the past, which gathers sufficient momentum to displace the true one. Most of the characters are exceptionally intelligent and erudite and their dialogue matches - indeed, defines - their intellectual stature. David Benedictus' production has the same cast as that of the National's staging: Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy and Samuel West as the moderns, and Rufus Sewell, Emma Fielding and Harriet Walter as the 19th century georgians. All are predictably excellent, especially Harriet Walter as the bird-brained, opinionated mother and Emma Fielding as her gifted, doomed daughter.

THE INVENTION OF LOVE was broadcast in 1999, again not long after its National Theatre production. It's a moving play about A.E.Housman with lots of jokes to heighten one's pleasure. John Wood repeated for radio his dazzling stage performance as the older Housman, newly dead, but still impressively articulate as he reviews his life and even encounters his younger self. The younger man is impeccably played by Ben Porter, driven inexorably into himself by a misplaced, unrequited love.

Tom Stoppard's combination of wit, eloquence, high spirits and high seriousness is entirely irresistible, as many have found in theatres throughout the world. Even his slightest work for radio embodies his qualities and at its best it stands with his best.

Barry Pike, copyright.

Many thanks, Barry, for this excellent and comprehensive review of Stoppard's work.


UPDATE, July 2007
To mark Tom Stoppard's 70th birthday, a number of his plays are being re-recorded. There are also repeats of earlier broadcasts going out on BBC7.

Note also: TOM STOPPARD INTERVIEW
BBC WS Meridian interview with Tom Stoppard: http://worldservice.prototyping.bbc.co.uk/programmes/XO269320

aft=afternoon theatre

Compiled from info. from R.Bickerton, B.Pike, Graham Nelson, and own collection. Most of the above recordings in vrpcc collections.

NOTES ON SOME OF THE PLAYS

IF YOU'RE GLAD I'LL BE FRANK....1966
'TIM' the talking telephone clock can think as well as speak and pip the seconds. She becomes disillusioned by the tyranny of time. Frank recognises in her voice the wife he loves. 8-Feb-1966. With Patsy Rowlands, Timothy West, Elizabeth Proud, Brian Hewlett, Henry Stamper, Barbara Mitchell, Isabel Rennie, Noel Howlett, Alan Haines, Austin Trevor, Eva Haddon. Produced by John Tydeman.

ALBERT'S BRIDGE....1967
The play won the award in the Czechoslovak International Radio Play Festival in Prague in 1968, and the Italia Prize the same year in Rome. 13-Jul-1967. Nigel Anthony, Alexander John, Geoffrey Wincott, John Hurt, Victor Lucas, Ian Thompson, Anthony Jackson, Ronald Herdman, Betty Hardy, Alan Dudley, Barbara Mitchell, Haydn Jones. Produced by Charles Lefeaux.

The first radio production of Albert's Bridge (with a young, 27 year old, John Hurt) was recently re-broadcast by Radio 4 Extra as part of Lynn Truss' Pick of the Archive. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0528nk7). First broadcast on "Network 3" -The Third Programme, 13 July 1967. (.....Alistair W, Mar 2015)

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? R3 18-Dec-1970. Two inter-cut locations: School Dinner 1945 and remembrances of it at Old Boys Dinner 1969. ...The Masters: Carleton Hobbs, Lockwood West. The Old Boys: John Humphrey, Rolf Lefebvre, Timothy West, John Wood, Kenneth Fortesque. The young boys: Geoffrey Owen, Anthony Barnett, Martin Baker, Charles Pinner, William Long, David Howe. Produced by John Tydeman.

ARTIST DESCENDING A STAIRCASE - 1972
commissioned for radio. Produced by John Tydeman. 14-Nov-1972. Stephen Murray, Rolf Lefebvre, Carleton Hobbs, Fiona Walker, Michael Spice, Peter Egan, Dinsdale Landen.

...short extract from an essay by David Wade, paraphrased by ND.......

....it is essential to the action that the audience cannot see what is going on, for the central character is a blind girl, and much of what happened in the play, and what she experienced before it, hinges on her blind interpretation. This puts the audience and the girl in the same boat, and both are equally easily misled. This is a most ingenious use of a sound-only medium ...

M IS FOR MOON AMONG OTHER THINGS, c 1972. (rpt. 1990.)
With Anna Massey and Clive Francis. Produced by Paul Schlesinger.

The DISSOLUTION OF DOMINIC BOOT. 1978
Producer: Glyn Dearman ....R4 25-Nov-1978. With Derek Fowlds, Maria Aitken, John Junkin, Amanda Murray, Jon Glover, Peter Wickham, Eva Stuart, Anthony Newlands, Noel Hood, William Fox.

PROFESSIONAL FOUL. ....1979
Written and adapted for radio by Tom Stoppard. Producer: Gordon House. Professor Anderson is a football-loving English philosopher on a visit to Prague to attend a conference on ethics. Anderson admits to being "a tiny bit naughty" for he hopes to play truant one afternoon & watch a football international between Eng. & Czech. But when a former student of the professor's asks him to smuggle a thesis on freedom back to England, Anderson is faced with a real ethical dilemma....This is a World Service Drama Production previously rec. 26.11.78 & Tx. ES 31.3.79. R4 11-Jun-1979 With Peter Barkworth as Anderson, John Shrapnel as McKendrick; also stars Nigel Anthony, Andrew Branch, Christopher Muncke, Ivan Jelinek, Susan Strawson, Stefan Ceba, George Pravda, Arnost Kopecky, Milos Kirek, John Bull, Bill Monks, Manning Wilson, Adrian Egan, Brenda Kaye, Jarmila Lederer, Jiri Nossek.

THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED....1983
- This play was specially commissioned as part of BBC's 60th Anniversary celebrations.:R3, 9-Dec-Dinsdale Landen, Charles Gray, Kenneth Cranham, Peter Tuddenham, Penelope Keith, Katherine Parr, Stephen Murray, Betty Marsden, John Le Mesurier, Noel Howlett, Maurice Denham, Lockwood West; produced by John Tydeman .

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD....1990
A radio version based on his original stage play. Producer: John Tydeman: R3, 24-Dec-With Edward Hardwicke, Edward Petherbridge, Freddie Jones, Martin Jarvis, Maxine Audley, Robert Lang, William Squire, Angela Pleasance, John Rye, Michael Deacon, Anthony Daniels, Philip Sully, Andrew Branch, Peter Wickham, Roger Hammond, Philip Voss, Tim Bentinck.


Albert's Bridge….2007 (re-make)
Friday play. 29 Jun 07. A man is painting a huge bridge. It’s a never-ending task. Paul Copley plays the irritable Yorkshireman. Originally broadcast on BBC World Service in 1988.

Albert ...... Paul Copley
Kate ...... Diane Bull
Fraser ...... Geoffrey Matthews
Chairman ...... George A Cooper
Fitch ...... Peter Baldwin
Dave ...... Richard Tate
George ...... John Sampson
Mother ...... Eva Stuart
Father ...... Alan Dudley
Painters ...... Norman Bird, Stephen Rashbrook
Director David Hitchinson.

........featured Paul Copley as the philosophy graduate who found the answers to many of life’s great questions by taking a job painting a bridge, a task that was never finished despite the calculations of his bumbling civic employers. He floated loftily above others both physically and cerebrally. But the cost was huge: his marriage crumbled and would-be suicides who got under his feet were given short shrift.. .........(summary of remarks by Moira Petty, from her review in "The Stage")


ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD....2007
The Tom Stoppard season, eight plays and several features across radios 3, 4 and BBC7, has been celebrating the 70th birthday of a remarkable playwright. I listened to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead ono Sunday night, wondering whether this was really the hour to be keeping company with a pair of bewildered courtiers and a troupe of strolling players. Shakespeare says that he'd trust them about as far as a pair of fanged adders. Stoppard is kinder to them. Here, played by Danny Webb and Andrew Lincoln, directed by Peter Kavanagh, that's how they came across; forever taken by surprise, in one fine mess after another. (paraphrased from Gillian Reynolds' review, DT, 17 Jul 07)


ROCK 'N' ROLL ....2007
8 Jul 07, R3.This play, about a Czech philosophy student studying at Cambridge University when the tanks invaded Prague in 1968, gets an original treatment for radio. The final scene is new. Bill Paxton plays the idealistic tutor who has his world rocked by a loss of belief. Music backdrop is by Syd Barrett, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and the Czech band "Plastic People of the Universe". (...paraphrased from Jane Anderson's remarks in RT, 7-13 July 07)

Stoppard's latest work for the stage. The radio version had Bill Paterson as Max, a Philosophy professor, and Daniel Evans as Jan, his Czech student, who returns to Prague at the time of the suppressed 1968 uprising and is imprisoned....ND


ARCADIA....1993; new production 2007
A listener from the BBC messageboard, wrote some lengthy comments, including the following, which I've summarised:

Although I'm not a Stoppard fan, I found this mesmerising. I heard it on Listen Again, and planned to listen to it in shortish segments, but I found myself so absorbed that I sat listening to the rest of it in one big gulp. This in spite of the fact that I wasn't much interested in the pop science aspect the high density of the text (or perhaps my brain), which resulted in a high proportion of the references whizzing by me before I could catch on to what was being said. Perhaps it was a bit too self-consciously clever, but after all, it was more of a comedy.

Another listener commented:.... it was a great production. I saw it years ago with Felicity Kendal, Rufus Sewell and Bill Nighy as the unscrupulous academic. My remembrance of the performance helped me follow the radio production with is complicated time shifts. I admire and envy Stoppard's ability to grasp a huge subject; here, the complexity of aspects of Romanticism, and make challenging comment and criticism.


THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON....2013
Scheduled for end-Aug 2013. Tom Stoppard has written a radio play based on Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon , forty years on. The play lasts an hour and blends the band's music with a story based on a young couple who face different modern dilemnas. It is an exploration of the modern psyche, exploring the album's themes which include conflict, greed and madness.

Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour has read the script and approves of it. It will be broadcast on Radio 2 over the August bank holiday weekend. The cast includes Bill Nighy and Rufus Sewell. The Dark Side of the Moon was Pink Floyd's most succesful album, selling 50 million copies.

Artist Descending A Staircase....2016
By Tom Stoppard. R3, 10 Jan 16. Very peculiar play centred around the last moments of a dying artist caught on tape. First production since 1972. 80m.Beauchamp: Derek Jacobi, Donner: Ian McDiarmid, Martello: Geoffrey Whitehead, Sophie: Pippa Nixon, Young Martello: Joshua McGuire, Young Beauchamp: Blake Ritson, Young Donner: Hugh Skinner. Producer: Gordon House.

Summary based on Jane Anderson's remarks in RT, after listening to it:
The play was written specifically for radio and was first broadcast in November 1972 on radio 3. It's set in 1972, and the dead body of an artist, Donner, is found at the foot of the stairs to the attic studio he shared with two fellow artists: Beauchamp and Martello. The three have lived with each other for fifty years. The play uses a curious device; it tracks back in time in each scene, using younger actors where necessary, until the pivotal moment in 1914; then it comes forward again to 1972. The artists are opinionated, deluded and self-important; the only person who can see what they are really like is Sophie, and she is blind.

24 Apr 21: Saturday Play: The Voyage of the St. Louis
Stage play by Daniel Kehlman, adapted for radio by Tom Stoppard. 90min. drama. Several months before the outbreak of the Second World War, an ocean liner, the St Louis, left Germany with about 900 Jewish refugees on-board, all hoping to escape persecution. The story of that journey is now brought to life. Based on the book The Voyage of the Damned by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. Schroeder . . . Philip Glenister, Schiendick . . . . . Paul Ritter, Berenson . . . . . Toby Jones, Bru . . . . . Alan Corduner, Benitez . . . . . Joseph Balderrama, Spanier . . . . . Philip Arditti, Pozner . . . . . Shai Matheson, Hoffman . . . . . John Dougall, Clasing . . . . . Roger Ringrose, Babette . . . . . Bettrys Jones, Jockl . . . . . Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Aber . . . . . Sargon Yelda, Elise . . . . . Rachel Essex, Charlotte . . . . . Elizabeth Counsell, Bergman . . . . . Hasan Dixon, Fischer . . . . . John Lightbody, Marianne . . . . . Rosie Boore, Renata . . . . . Amy-Jayne Leigh, Evelyne . . . . . Taya Tower. Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.

compiled by Nigel Deacon / ©Diversity website.


Copyright of the bits I've summarised (indicated) rests with the original writers and may not be reproduced commercially. Thanks to Ned Chaillet for spotting the new Stoppard CDs and to Evie Jeffreys of the British Library for sending details.

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