Karl Kraus: The Last Days of Mankind
BBC Radio 3
The play deals with man's inhumanity to man in the First World War and the decline of a corrupt civilisation into the brutality of the war to
end all wars. The one voice of sanity, Kraus the Grouse, is drowned first by patriotic madness, then by the unreality of war. With music
from the first and second Viennese schools in which the disintegration of musical tonality echoes the collapse of civilisation.
Karl Kraus's 1926 masterwork translated by Robert David MacDonald
Adapted by Giles Havergal.
With John Bett [The Reverend], Chris Delaney [The Common Soldier], Anna Ford [The Newsreader], Patrick Hannaway, Giles
Havergal [Karl Kraus the Grouse], Crawford Logan, Robert David MacDonald, Stephen MacDonald, Sandy Neilson, Alison Peebles,
Laurance Rudic, Paul Scofield [God], Gerda Stevenson, Finlay Welsh, Sandy Welsh and Matthew Whittle.
Directed by Giles Havergal.
1) Part 1 of 2 (Saturday 11th December 1999 @ 8:55 p.m.)
Re-broadcast on Sunday 2nd April 2000 @ 7:30 p.m.
130 min.
2) Part 2 of 2 (Sunday 12th December 1999 @ 10:00 p.m.)
BBC Radio 3: Sunday Play
The conclusion of Karl Kraus's masterwork translated by Robert David MacDonald and adapted by Giles Havergal. The play tells the
story of man's inhumanity during the First World War. Destruction rains down on the subjects of the Habsburg Empire, who find themselves inhabiting an increasingly surreal world.
Re-broadcast on Sunday 9th April 2000 @ 7:30 p.m.
125 min.
