Buffalo Bill and Little Matty Dyer by Peter Spafford is a period piece that feels like it has been a bit injected with the a type of political consciousness from several decades later. I say "feels" because I have no knowledge of what a 14 year old boy in Leeds would understand about anything. That said it remains an engaging play about a Buffalo Bill Wild West Show tour of England in 1903. Buffalo Bill Wild West Show was an entertainment that toured the US and Europe from 1883 and for roughly the next 39 years.
Peter Spafford presents a backstage story with minor players becoming involved with the some of the locals in Leeds. There is the fact of the continuous injustice to the American Indians, some of whom are players in the show, and continue to have trouble within the troop and with local discrimination. I have no idea if in reality the traveling players would be so involved with the locals, as Little Matty Dyer is in the play, but the notion does afford an opportunity for an entertaining and slightly pleasantly didactic play.
Buffalo Bill and Little Matty Dyer is well produced and performed, setting the mood of time and place, Definitely worth a listen, but probably off the BBC iPlayer Listen Again by the time you read this.
