Billiards at half-past nine
Heinrich Böll
BBC Radio 3: Drama on 3
Broadcast: Sunday 30th April 2006 @ 8:00 p.m.
In its searing examination of the moral crises of postwar Germany, "Billiards at Half Past Nine" examines the lives of three generations
of architects and their responses to the Nazi regime and its aftermath. The present-day action takes place on the day of September 6,
1958, the 80th birthday of patriarch Heinrich Fahmel, who built St. Anthony's Abbey. The story stretches back to the turn of the century
through the use of flashbacks and the retelling of memories of the characters. It follows the Faehmel family in post-Nazi Germany as
well as their history during the First World War through the present day of 1958.
At the end of World War II, Heinrich's son Robert destroyed the abbey to protest the church's complicity with the Nazis; Robert's son,
Joseph, is serving his apprenticeship by helping to restore St. Anthony's. All three characters confront their relationship to building and
destruction, as well as their personal and historical past.
Dramatised by Claire Luckham from Heinrich Böll's novel 1959, "Billiards at Half Past Nine". Heinrich Böllthe won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1972.
With Michael Maloney [Robert Faehmel], Sam Beazley [Jochen Kuhlgamme], Kenneth Cranham [Schrella], Henry Goodman
[Nettlinger], Jasmine Hyde [Ruth Faehmel], Dilys Laye [Joanna Faehmel], Geoffrey Palmer [Heinrich Faehmel], Paul Ready [Hugo],
Daniel Weyman [Joseph Faehmel], and Oscar Fletcher [Young Heinrich Faehmel].
Other parts were played by members of the company.
Music Composer, Arranger, and Conducted by Orlando Gough.
Singing by soloist Melanie Pappenheim and the German-Speaking Church Choir of London's Christ Church, Knightsbridge
Directed by Roxana Silbert .
Produced by Marilyn Imrie
90 min.
Jim
