Wednesday, June 8, 2016

2016 Quarter 1 Review 1/7



As I’ve proven awful at keeping this blog updated despite the fact I’m regularly listening to six BBC radio dramas per week plus other things from time to time, I decided to try a new strategy of giving quarterly highlights in different categories.  That’s gotta go some way toward getting some reviews out, right?  I’ve also some up with these handy new categories, with “new” being on original broadcast or new to me and “old” being anything re-broadcast.  I find genre is sometimes difficult to pin down so these are subjective categories as well.  

001 Historical Drama – New
002 Historical Drama - Old
003 Historical Comedy – New
004 Historical Comedy – Old
005 Contemporary Drama – New
006 Contemporary Drama – Old
007 Horror – New
008 Horror – Old
009 Police Procedural – Old
010 Police Procedural – New
011 Contemporary Comedy – New
012 Contemporary Comedy – Old
013 Adaptation – Old
014 Adaptation – New
015 Speculative Fiction – Old
016 Speculative Fiction – New
017 Mystery – New
018 Mystery – Old

005 Contemporary Drama – New
Distinguished and award-winning playwright and poet Michael Symons Roberts contributed 79 Birthdays, a thought-provoking play in blank verse in January.  Starring Starring Nico Mirallegro, David Calder, Kate Coogan, Emily Pithon, Russell Dixon and directed by Susan Roberts, I didn’t quite know what to make of the play at first.  Inspired by Lance Sieveking’s 1928 Kaleidoscope (of which no script and certainly no recording survive) which showed a day in the life of one person, the play took the average lifespan of a man in 2016—79—and embroidered upon its theme.  Jimmy died before he was born—so how come he’s ended up in limbo with the angel Leila (an RP-voiced man)?  Jimmy wants to see the blueprint of the life he could have had, so Leila fast-forwards to some of his birthdays.  It took several days for this conceit to mellow in my brain.

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