Well, I'm back to listening to BBC Radio 4. I listened to The Material World today on the iPlayer. The iPlayer worked flawlessly. I still prefer to use a stand alone player app if I can. When I use the iPlayer via Safari and continue to scroll other web pages it pauses. This is irritating. But the bottom line is that I really enjoy the BBC radio drama content, and view it as an enormous gift even if the wrapping paper is sticky and annoying at times.
And I'm happy to be listening to the plays again, I missed them.
The Afternoon Play production of Caesar Price our Lord by Fin Kennedy is quite an interesting show. "Roll up!" one and all.
Somehow I feel that BBC radio has covered this sort of topic before and I was expecting something lighter and silly. What I got was a beautifully crafted entertainment that drew me in at the very first with the sound design, Jon Nicholls's music with lot of synth strings, and a little nervous Bernard Herrmann-mish repeating line.
Then Lee Ingleby speaks as Caesar. This first speech set within the music and thunder claps, is delivered with such intimate, soft spoken conviction that I was instantly hypnotized, disbelief suspended, and ready for the ride.
From that first speech Lee Ingleby's performance is so sympathetic, so convincing, the quality of his voice so beautiful, I was really pulling for his character. I loved the guy and wanted him to be the second coming.
Of course, I didn't at all expect him to be. How could it have ended up that way? These things just don't. Yet there was the possibility. I mean, I don't really know how the universe works. There is always the remote possibility the my lord and savior could end up revealing himself to me through a radio drama, one that only I can hear.
This production is a little miracle in that they pulled it off at all and yet did so in a way that I was disappointed when I noticed the time was running out and it would have to end and I would no longer be surrounded (I listened with earphones) by these voices, these sounds. It might have been better with the hour long Saturday Play slot, or the Friday Play if that ever comes back.
Fin Kennedy produced a script that set me to thinking about matters such as the level of trauma in the lives of people in the public eye, and how dangerous that is in a mass media world. How many screwed up damaged individuals are we looking up to, the ones running things, the ones who need the power and wealth to make them feel secure, shelter them from the pain that they can not bare to allow in? How many times have we people followed leaders into death, a death that represents the only hope of salvation for the twisted leader who can't bare to look himself in the mirror and drags us all into his lethal scenarios of destructive distraction?
Yes I know, this is not what is on the surface of the drama. But I am here to present my subjective opinion and tell you were my mind goes during and after the show.
As I said before, this is a beautiful production all the way around. It is lucid, direct. We hear a sound cue, a "whoosh", a change in ambiance that tells us we are in the past, a flashback, or into someone's thoughts, memories.
A fun ride! Thanks to Fin Kennedy, Lee Ingleby, Jon Nicholls, Nadia Molinari and all.
The Afternoon Play
BBC Radio 4
The play can be heard here, through Thursday Oct. 2, 2008, via iPlayer, or whatever one can manage.
