Be jealous of our BBC
I accidentally ended up catching the Saturday Play* on BBC Radio 4 and couldn't turn it off, even though I had other things I should have been doing (well, you can still do the chores with the radio on, even if it is far too nice to be indoors here). It was beautifully written with so many of the lines catching my breath with their truth, then making me wince with the wit of them. To add to its glory it stars Diana Rigg (one of London’s theatres' deservedly treasured matriarchs and previous gun-toting siren in The Avengers). It's about a marriage and the role of women within relationships: all the things they may choose to give up on (or not), how people seek validation through others and questions what really is of value. Of course, it uses characters to represent our preconceived truisms about ways of living; and everyone is far more eloquent than they ever are in real life, compressing the essence of the issues into one line, when two months of floating around the edges of things wouldn't ever say as much for most of us. But that is the very nature of much good theatre: that compression, to highlight things we already knew but couldn't make quite clear for ourselves without another's words: to bring comfort to us for our inner thoughts or make us challenge where we are and how we think. Perhaps this play will appear as simplistic tripe to many; but to me it summed up so much of what I see around me, and used language I could but ever dream to have handy as a tool to represent me.
I'm afraid writing coherently about plays and theatre and literature and clever-stuff is a skill I’ve never acquired; but if you enjoy good theatre on the radio, and have an hour and a half when you're going to be at home (or stuck in traffic jam or something), then make a point to use the Radio 4 'listen again' feature. The play will be available for seven days.
*(Honour, By Joanna Murray-Smith - I’ve noted this here for me as the link will soon move to another play.)