Forty-Three Fifty-Nine- Assassins is the third Forty-Three Fifty-Nine play I've heard . Forty-Three Fifty-Nine is the time length of BBC Radio 4, The Afternoon Play time slot in which the programs have been presented. In this, like the other two plays, the drama plays out in real time.
Assassins by John Dryden and Mike Walker is about a father who is a hit man and his daughter to whom he is passing down the family business. We enter on a conversation between these two as they head for a job. They seem, normal, pleasant enough, and as these two are all we know here at the outset, the play works to direct our sympathy toward them. The subdued direct performances of Henry, Rob Jarvis and Cathy, Meghan Haggerty, in a particularly deadpan turn, drawn us into their ultimately despicable world.
They arrive at the location of the day's job. It is a lavish estate with a high hedge and a private beach. It is the home of a hedge fund manager. Henry social engineers his way into the house and but ultimately raises the suspicion of Bryant, his soon to be victim.
Everything goes horrible wrong after that. This is where the moral ambiguity of the play serves the production. We like the hit man and his daughter and want things to work out for them in spite of their unsupportable criminal behavior. The conversation between Henry and Cathy is particularly sinister. Deadpan Cathy asks her dad, what are you going to do now? When he says sometime one has to improvise when things don't go as planned, as things get even worse, Cathy quietly throws it back at him, well I guess you'll have to improvise dad.
This is a fine production. Performances, script, sound design, all top grade.
The tone of the play, as we are riding with the killers, brings to mind the delight of the long running classic radio drama anthology series The Whistler. This show plays like a very good episode of The Whistler. I quite like The Whistler. Great lowlife noir fun.
BTW: The notorious BBC iPlayer functioned perfectly on this one. I used Foxfire. It played without pause. I guess it is safe for me to jump back into the BBC Radio 4 waters now. This is a good thing.
