Quarter 4 Review 1/8

One year’s worth of reviews . . . phew!   Quarter 4 represents a Halloween October and November gorge on scary radio drama of past and present, so I apologize in advance.  But if you like that, then you’ll find much to enjoy.  Let’s go! 

001 Historical Drama – New

The Bargain was originally a stage play by Ian Curteis but made its radio debut, I believe, last year.  I thought the play was excellent, and David Horovitch unrecognizable as Robert Maxwell.  When I told people after having heard the play how staggered I was that Maxwell had been born in Czechoslovakia and that his parents had been murdered in Auschwitz, no one seemed that bothered.  The playwright is arguing—and seems to have good reason to do so—that Maxwell (the Murdoch-ish newspaper industry tycoon of the 1980s who broke strikes and made all liberals everywhere taste something sour) was motivated to forget his past (not to mention what normal people would call decency and morals) because poverty had made such a strong impression, and he was determined never to go back to that way of life.  However, according to this play, Mother Teresa (Charlotte Cornwell) had him sussed out and was an even better judge of character, and manipulator, than Maxwell.  For a long time, she will not reveal the “price” she asks for Maxwell in return for lending her name to his books which will serve as a cover for his money laundering.  Teresa, meanwhile, (ironically) is no saint, and Maxwell delights in digging up dirt about her.  Maxwell has discovered that her key weakness is her vanity.  However, she is also a rather amusing character.  The play is rounded out by Maxwell’s rather decent “Sidekick” (David Sibley) and Sister (Geraldine Alexander), Mother Teresa’s savvy PA.  It was directed by David Ian Neville.

To my surprise, there was a further instalment of The Forsytes, this time The Forsytes Returns.  I thought The Forsytes had ended with the last series, but it seems there was at least a book and a half left to go.  The very short interlude—in which Fleur, Soames, and Michael were traveling to America and Soames saw Irene playing the piano in a hotel, but she never saw him—was touchingly poignant, and made me feel so strange that I felt sympathy with Soames.  The bulk of the story concerned Fleur Forsyte Mont (Jessica Raine) and Michael Mont, however.  Firstly, values new and old continued to come into conflict when Fleur had an altercation with a society woman, Marjorie, played by Jemma Rooper.  The casting was not up to snuff, just because Jemima Rooper and Jessica Raine sound too much alike.  Difficulties arise when a married Jon Forsyte and his America wife arrive in England.  Fleur is kept busy by the General Strike but has ulterior motives.  In the end, shockingly, she actually gets what she wants:  she and Jon sleep together, but Jon decides to return to his wife and never see Fleur again.  Fleur, broken-hearted, accidentally creates a fire in her father’s picture gallery.  I was impressed with the monumental Forsytes generally.