Stage Voices

BARRY RECKORD: ‘SKYVERS’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 12/18--LINK BELOW)

‘SKYVERS’ by Barry Reckord

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01806nx

1960s London. A group of lads spends the last few days at their sink London comprehensive. What will become of the would-be footballer, the ambitious chancer or the boy on probation?

Cast:
Cragge ..... Danny Worters
Brook ..... Jason Maza
Colman ..... Abdul Salis
Adams ..... Rikki Lawton
Jordan ..... Theo Barklem-Biggs
Helen ..... Joan Iyiola
Sylvia ..... Shannon Tarbet
Freeman ..... Carl Prekopp
Webster ..... Gerard McDermott
Headmaster ..... Paul Moriarty

Directed by Mary Peate

First produced at The Royal Court Theatre in 1963. Director Pam Brighton, to whom the play belongs, according to Reckord, says ' When I first came across Skyvers in 1970, it struck me as a powerful, relevant and hugely articulate work...How had Barry, a Jamaican teacher in a London comprehensive, described so accurately the alienation and rage of South London boys? The entrapment of both boys and girls bounded by sex, violence and either dull dead-end jobs or crime was described so perfectly by Barry.'

Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah has curated new radio productions of three 20th Century plays for Radio 3's Drama on 3 and Skyvers is the last in the series. The three plays are introduced by Kwei-Armah, who describes how each of the writers influenced his own development as an actor and playwright. Kwame is currently based in Baltimore where he is Artistic Director of Center Stage Theater.

Michael Billington on Skyvers in The Guardian:

' Other dramatists such as Nigel Williams in Class Enemy went on to explore the failure of the system to cope with those at the bottom of the heap. But Reckord got there first and while it is tempting to say times have changed, new figures show that up to 16million adults today have the reading and writing skills of primary schoolchildren... a piece that proves that the best drama offers vital social evidence.'

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SEAN O'CASEY: ‘THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 12/11--LINK BELOW)

Sean O'Casey's classic play set in the midst of the Easter Rising of 1916. The impact of events is viewed through the eyes of ordinary people inhabiting a Dublin tenement. O'Casey's masterpiece paints a vivid portrait of a city and a nation in turmoil.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017ss4b

The Plough and the Stars is the second in a three-part series of classic plays chosen for Drama on 3 by the playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah. Kwame also introduces this new production of the play.

NORA ..... Elaine Cassidy
JACK ..... Padraic Delaney
BESSIE ..... Gabrielle Reidy
FLUTHER ..... Finbar Lynch
PETER ..... Stephen Hogan
THE COVEY ..... Jonathan Forbes
MRS GOGAN ..... Fiona Clarke
MOLLSER ..... Rebecca Gleeson
ROSIE ..... Jane McGrath
CAPT BRENNAN ..... Matthew McNulty
LIEUT. LANGAN ..... Sam Smith
Musical Director ..... Conrad Nelson

Directed by Nadia Molinari.

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AUGUST WILSON: ‘THE PIANO LESSON’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 12/4--LINK BELOW)

In August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in Pittsburgh in 1936, an ancient upright piano carved with African faces dominates the parlour of Doaker Charles. Boy Willie and his partner Lymon have come up from the south to sell watermelons. Boy Willie has just got out of prison and he wants to buy the land his ancestors once worked as slaves but his sister is not about to sell the piano.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017lz81

Boy Willie...John Earl Jelks
Berniece...Roslyn Ruff
Doaker...Stephen McKinley Henderson
Lymon...Chris Chalk
Wining Boy...Anthony Chisholm
Grace...Marsha Stephanie Blake
Avery...Leland Gantt
Maretha...Zadshire Dupuis

Creative consultant Ricardo Khan,
Pianist Ernie Scott
Director Claire Grove

Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah has curated new radio productions of three 20th Century plays for Radio 3's Drama on 3, The Piano Lesson is the first in the series and will be followed by The Plough and the Stars by Sean O'Casey on December 4th and: Skyvers by Barry Reckord on December 11th.
The three broadcasts will be introduced by Kwame Kwei-Armah, who will talk about how each of the writers, and the plays, influenced his own development as an actor and playwright. Kwame is currently based in Baltimore where he is Artistic Director of Center Stage Theater.

"The glow accompanying August Wilson's place in contemporary American theatre is fixed." Toni Morrison .
August Wilson (1945 - 2005) is America's foremost black playwright. This production was recorded at Tony Award winning Crossroads Theatre New Brunswick, New Jersey, with the support of August Wilson's widow, and an outstanding cast which includes actors like Stephen Henderson and Anthony Chisholm who worked extensively with August Wilson. Anthony and Stephen were both in the Olivier award winning production of Jitney which took London by storm ten years ago and Stephen and Chris Chalk were both in the Broadway Tony award winning production of August Wilson's Fences starring Denzel Washington. Stephen Henderson has just finished working on Spike Lee's new film which will be released next year and he is currently working on a new film with Steven Spielberg.

The Piano Lesson is the fourth of August Wilson's cycle of ten plays about the African American experience in the twentieth century. It opened at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987 and in 1990 on Broadway it won a Pulitzer Prize , a Drama Desk Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. The play was inspired by Romare Bearden's painting of the same name. August Wilson saw its scene of a teacher and student as an allegory for how African Americans must learn to negotiate their history.

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MIKE BARTLETT: ‘COCK’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 11/27--LINK BELOW)

The Royal Court Theatre production of Mike Bartlett's acclaimed and uncompromising play. On a break from his boyfriend, John accidentally falls for a woman, causing pain all round and exploding John's conceptions of his relationship, his sexuality and his identity.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017cgkn

Cock was first presented by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009, directed by James Macdonald.

The play contains the strongest language.

Cast:

John ..... Ben Whishaw
M ..... Andrew Scott
W ..... Katherine Parkinson
F ..... Paul Jesson

Produced by Mary Peate.

The original cast of the Olivier Award-winning Royal Court production is made up of: Ben Whishaw (most recently seen in BBC TV drama 'The Hour'); Katherine Parkinson (best known for The IT Crowd); Andrew Scott (also the recipient of an Olivier Award and most recently seen in Sherlock) and Paul Jesson (most recently Gloucester in the Donmar Warehouse production of King Lear).

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VIVIENNE FRANZMANN: ‘MOGADISHU’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 10/30--LINK BELOW)

Vivienne Franzmann's cutting-edge play explores the consequences of an assault on a white female teacher by a troubled black student and her well-meaning but misguided attempt to protect him.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0167s72

Mogadishu was originally produced at the Manchester Royal Exchange in 2011 and won both the Bruntwood Award for Writing and The George Devine Prize for 'Most Promising Playwright'. The critics called it "A startling debut", "A tough, gripping spectacle", "The play of the year? Quite possibly".

As the school investigates an allegation of physical and racial abuse, the teacher becomes entangled in a mesh of legal requirements and formal processes that threaten her family stability and her career.

Franzmann - a former teacher herself - has adapted the play for radio and uses multiple perspectives on the incident to show how formal procedure and protocol can override common sense and professional judgement.

Mogadishu unfolds in a series of actions, reversals and counter-reversals with sharp dialogue and fast-pacing. The language of contemporary teenagers is presented with considerable authenticity revealing them to be complex, dysfunctional, funny and vulnerable.

The play contains the strongest language and some racist insults.

Amanda ..... Candida Benson,
Jason ..... Malachi Kirby,
Chris ..... Jonathan Guy Lewis,
Becky ..... Shannon Tarbett,
Saif ..... Farshid Rokey,
Chuggs ..... Tendayi Jambere,
Dee ..... Chereen Buckley,
Firat ..... Michael Karim,
Peter ..... Ashley Campbell,
Ben ..... Darren Saul.

Sound by Ross Adams.
Directed by Willi Richards.
Produced by Roger James Elsgood.
Mogadishu is an Art and Adventure production for the BBC.

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IBSEN: ‘BRAND’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 10/23--LINK BELOW)

As part of Radio 3's Conviction series, Henrik Ibsen's study of a religious zealot who refuses to compromise, leading him to risk catastrophe for himself and his family. Faced with possible tragedy for his loved ones, will he persist with his absolutism?

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwj 

Brand ..... Gerard Murphy
Agnes ..... Morven Christie
Mayor ..... Jeremy Swift
Mother/Voice ..... Ann Mitchell
Ejnar ..... Carl Prekopp
Gerd, Son, Woman ..... Alex Tregear
Doctor ..... Alan Cox
Provost ..... Mark Tandy
Guide, Man ..... James Lailey
Crazed Woman ..... Susie Riddell
Gipsy, Woman ..... Elaine Claxton
Sexton, Man ..... Reg Stewart
Schoolmaster, Man ..... Gerard McDermott
Man ..... Simon Bubb

Music composed and performed by Nicolai Abrahamsen.

Directed by Peter Kavanagh.

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O’NEILL: ‘EXORCISM’ (BELOW, PERFORMANCE LINK TO A MONOLOGUE--FROM AN O’NEILL PLAY PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME)

(Myles Kane’s post appeared in the online New Yorker, 10/10.)

This week in the magazine (the ‘New Yorker’), Eugene O’Neill’s play “Exorcism” is published for the first time. “Over the years, the story of O’Neill’s own, botched suicide attempt, at age twenty-four, was told in many ways,” John Lahr writes in an introduction to the play, which “marks the tipping point—the moment in O’Neill’s tortured life when he gave up the romance of death for the romance of art.” In this video, Tommy Schrider gives a dramatic reading of a speech by O’Neill’s alter ego, Ned Malloy.

(See monologue performed via link below)

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/10/eugene-oneill-exorcism-reading.html#ixzz1aTlR6oh3

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SHAW: ‘SAINT JOAN’ (LISTEN NOW ON BBC RADIO 3 UNTIL 10/15--LINK BELOW)

Saint Joan: A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue
by Bernard Shaw

Listen at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015n063

It would be unthinkable not to include a new production of Saint Joan in Radio 3's Conviction season, which features new plays and classic drama about people with unwavering and uncompromising beliefs - and the consequences for those around them.

Shaw's Saint Joan is the embodiment of absolute conviction. Given, as she believes, a divine mission to lead the French to victory and nationhood, she is also divinely forbidden to shed a single drop of blood. Her only weapon is her belief, and the courage it puts into those around her. In Joan, Shaw presents us with a character of remarkable talent and unshakeable faith - but no grace - and reveals her fate at the hands of normal men and women who, as Shaw notes, do what they find they must do, in spite of their best intentions. Joan's convictions are contagious. They make her an unstoppable force. They also lead her to destruction. 'There were only two opinions about her', Shaw observes in his preface to the play, 'One that she was miraculous: the other that she was unbearable.'

Joan of Arc was canonised in 1920, a fact which galvanised Shaw to complete the play with which he had long been toying. A humane masterpiece, full of comedy, outrage, satire and anger, it examines the seismic changes in medieval society of which Joan was a precursor, for an audience themselves struggling with a shocking new post-war order. An immediate success, the play restored Shaw to universal popularity, helping him to the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, as the Academy observed, "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty".

Joan ('The Maid') ..... Lyndsey Marshal
Robert de Baudricourt/The Chaplain (John de Stogumber) ..... Paul Ritter
The Archbishop of Rheims ..... Anton Lesser
The Duke of Tremouille/The Inquisitor ..... Sean Baker
Charles, the Dauphin (later Charles VII) ..... Blake Ritson
Bluebeard (Gilles de Rais)/Brother Martin Ladvenu ..... Nyasha Hatendi
Captain La Hire/Canon John d'Estivet ..... Daniel Rabin
Count of Dunois, Bastard of Orleans/Bertrand de Poulengey ..... Trystan Gravelle
The Earl of Warwick ..... Jonathan Coy
Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais ..... Paul Hilton
Thomas de Courcelles ..... Stuart McLoughlin
de Baudricourt's Steward/The Executioner ..... Brian Bowles
Dunois' Page ..... Ryan Watson

Adapted, Produced and Directed by Jonquil Panting

The music is taken from 'The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace', by Karl Jenkins.

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SHAKESPEARE/WILLIAMS: ‘THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN’ (REVIEW PICK, NY)

(Adam Feldman’s article appeared in Time Out New York, 9/23.)

One of my happiest surprises at the theater in recent memory is The Life and Death of King John, the extraordinary inaugural production of a troupe called New York Shakespeare Exchange. I went to see the play, I must confess, with trepidation in my heart; my principal motive was to see this rarely produced history onstage for the first time. But King John, adapted and directed by Ross Williams, does much more than fill a blank spot on a Shakespeare completist’s checklist. Boldly illuminating the obscurities of the text—the play is a litany of intra-aristocratic squabbles about royal succession at the turn of the 13th century—Williams has fashioned a lucid, red-blooded and engaging account of loyalty, luck and medieval realpolitik.

(Read more)

http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/theater/1990175/review-the-life-and-death-of-king-john

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: ‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM’ (LISTEN NOW UNTIL 9/18 ON BBC RADIO 3--LINK BELOW)

The play revolves around the adventures of four young lovers, a group of amateur actors and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014fb7x

The story takes place in Midsummer and is a complex farce featuring Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius. Their romantic intrigues are confused and complicated still further by entering the forest where Oberon King of the fairies and his queen Titania, preside. Puck (or Robin Goodfellow) is a major character who is full of mischief and tricks. Other visitors to the enchanted forest include Bottom, the Weaver and his friends Snug, Snout, Quince and Flute, the amateur dramatists who want to rehearse their terrible but hilarious version of the play Pyramus and Thisbe.

Recorded this summer on location in 22 acres of Sussex woodland, this production has an all star cast.

Director: Celia de Wolff

Music by Stephanie Nunn

Titania ..... Lesley Sharp
Oberon ..... Toby Stephens
Peter Quince ..... Robert Pugh
Nick Bottom ..... Roger Allam
Puck ..... Freddie Fox
Theseus ..... Nicholas Farrell
Hippolyta ..... Emma Fielding
Lysander ..... Joseph Timms
Demetrius ..... Ferdinand Kingsley
Hermia ..... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Helena ..... Anna Madeley
Egeus / Starveling ..... David Collings
Philostrate / Snug ..... Nicholas Boulton
Fairy ..... Sara Markland
Francis Flute ..... Sam Alexander
Tom Snout ..... Sam Dale
Peaseblossom ..... Jessica Sian
Cobweb ..... Jay Carter
Moth ..... Tressa Brooks
Mustardseed ..... Stuart Walker.

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