Fugitive Pieces: Anne Michaels
BBC Radio 3: Sunday Play
Broadcast: Sunday 4th April 1999 @ 7:30 p.m.
Anne Michaels' award-winning story of love, exile, concealment and loss, and the damage inflicted by the Holocaust on the lives of two
survivors.
In Poland during World War II, seven-year-old Jakob Beer's parents are murdered by Nazi soldiers and his adored elder sister, Bella,
is abducted. The mourning child flees and is miraculously rescued by Athos Roussos, a Greek geologist, who smuggles Jakob to his
native island of Zakynthos, where he successfully hides him from the Nazi authorities and introduces him to a new world of geology,
poetry, botany, and art.
After the war the two move to Toronto, and Jakob embarks on marriage and a career as a poet. Through the experience of profound
love, Jakob eventually transcends the tragedies of his youth; but his spirit remains forever linked with that of his lost sister. As Jakob
gets older, his life and work provide inspiration and, eventually, spiritual regeneration, for Ben, a young professor whose own family has
been blighted by the Holocaust.
Adapted by Roger Elsgood from Anne Michaels's 1996 novel, "Fugitive Pieces".
With Timothy Ackroyd [Jakob Beer], John Hug [Ben], Dee Hart [Michaela, Jakob's Second Wife], Ray Singer [Athos Roussos],
Genevieve Allenbury [Naomi, Ben's Wife], John Tallents [Ioannis], Joanna Wyatt [Bella, Jakob's Older Sister], Hilary Derrett [Alex,
Jakob's First Wife], Bill Dufris [Maurice Salman, Jacob's Oldest and Dearest Friend], Anton Nazareth [Young Jakob], Elaine
Ives-Cameron [Daphne], Michael Walker [Kostas], and Sarah Jane Vitsou? [Petra].
Music specially composed by Trilok Gurtu and Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner).
Production recorded entirely on location on the Greek Island of Zakynthos and in Toronto and London.
Directed by Roger Elsgood.
Re-broadcast on Sunday 19th March 2000 @ 7:30 p.m.
90 min.
Jim
