Do3 15-02-15 "Macedonia" by David Rudkin

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And 'and a depraved orgy of blood'?

? Are there other sorts? (In Hemel Hempstead, does one become invited round for a quiet, candel-lit orgy of blood with just a few select friends?)

[french frank]

? Are there other sorts? (In Hemel Hempstead, does one become invited round for a quiet, candel-lit orgy of blood with just a few select friends?)

Well, in Wales, you also get a raffle and refreshment of your choice - beat that, Hemel Hempstead!

[Honoured Guest]

Yes, but what we really want to know is: did you listen to Macedonia?....and for that matter this NTW production (why you offer it, I am unsure at first glance) - did you see that play?

Yes, I heard Macedonia and I'd like to listen again when it's rebroadcast. I think the play would have most resonance to listeners who are already steeped in the life and works of Euripedes and the history of the period. If you don't come to it with much of that, you can only have a limited appreciation. I fall in that category, although I could sense that it was very sincere and well-executed, which is why I should like to hear it again when the repeat is scheduled.

I mentioned The Village Social because French Frank had jokingly referred to welsh versions of The Bacchae. Yes, I did see it, in a village hall in Wales with a predominantly local audience, and it was very funny throughout and also more than a little disturbing when the bloodletting commenced.

[french frank]

I mentioned The Village Social because French Frank had jokingly referred to welsh versions of The Bacchae

Point of Information: it was Eighth who brought up the Welsh Connection: I was focusing on the ancient Greek.

Perhaps we can all revisit this thread when we have given Macedonia another listen?

[eighthobstruction]

I listened to Macedonia, and very quickly began to see it as a social phenomenon. I asked myself why is it being broadcast, why has it been made - there's nothing new to it, it is well trodden territory, evoking of classic arcadia....sage, rosemary, marjoram, dry maddening winds , an old man in last creative burst, peasant simplicity, dreams and nightmares - reality, unreality - spectres, animal noises and music in the air.
To your posts which say: 'it was very sincere and well-executed' ,'Play and production were labours of love', I do not argue....I guess as ff wrote that you consider it worthy of a Do3 slot . I don't really argue with that either (as I said above I did not listen to the 3 clips nor did I see the Rudkin link by aeolium #1) I made my research elsewhere ref Euripides life and plays; not Rudkin.
Rudkin probably started writing before I was born , he is probably 20 years my senior. He has been lucky enough to have been well educated lead an academic/Theatrical life (to be brief), has plenty of past success and the accolades of his equals. I guess (and I'm sure it will be confirmed should I look at those links) this is his bow out play for beeb , and for that reasons the old man writing a last play is ripe with dimensions; mirroring, feeding. Also no doubt there are some Rudkin in jokes for the few who will know them. He has trodden Arcadian paths throughout the years, using his talent and the Classics to make his living....to make his status. He's had 50 good years, possibly a certain amount of safety. This is of course what many people are lucky enough to do.
In the end I see it as a vanity project. My iconoclastic nature, can appreciate the subtleties, the juice of years of academia/writing, but still want to gently tear it down and the Bacchae as well....to allow someone younger to take the space. In my eye he has made nothing special - nothing memorable (excepting this reaction from myself) . No matter if he is a good and modest man worthy of respect this is a vanity project....and good luck to him. Yes, a labour of love. Yes sincere and well executed. The social phenomenon that I notice is only middleclass people scratching one another's backs and tummies. It's the way of the world....maybe there is just a little envy from myself....
Ed: just listened to the clips....he sounds a very harmless lovable ol'chap....may he go in peace....and will he and you please excuse my odd attitude

[french frank]

I shall have something to say (in fact I think I did say he identified with Euripides, and I was thinking of a play produced late in life).

[Honoured Guest]

... I guess (and I'm sure it will be confirmed should I look at those links) this is his bow out play for beeb , and for that reasons the old man writing a last play is ripe with dimensions; ...

The Lovesong of Alfred J Hitchcock was premiered on a stage tour just last autumn, so I'd be surprised if David Rudkin has written his last play.

http://newperspectives.co.uk/?idno=1168&s=1

David Rudkin has never been in fashion, but has always had a few champions. Afore Night Come is revived from time to time - I've seen two major productions: Clwyd Theatr Cymru (dir: Dominic Cooke) and Young Vic (dir: Rufus Norris) and I'd see it again if a similarly promising new production is near enough to me. It seems to me that David Rudkin has continued to write what he wants, instead of chasing popularity. Drama on 3 (and on 4) still produces a balanced mix of classics and new plays by established and emerging writers, although there are of course many fewer Radio 3 productions than in past years.

[aeolium]

I listened to Macedonia yesterday evening and I found myself in some sympathy with eighthobstruction's reaction, in that I felt that this was too considered, too self-referential (an old man's play about an old man writing a play, possibly his last) and lacking in drama whether of plot, ideas or character. I wondered what was the motivation behind the dramatist trying to imagine, at two and a half millennia's distance, the thoughts of an ancient Greek playwright. As with all historical drama there was the uneasy tension between the living language and ideas of the dramatist's contemporary world and the very different thought-world of the earlier time (almost unimaginably different in the case of the ancient Greeks). No amount of interpolation of old Macedonian Greek phrases (or, as Rudkin described it in his note on the play, 5th century BC Thessalian) could prevent me feeling that this was a very pale reflection of the Hellenic world as conveyed in the actual drama of the period, and I wished we were hearing some actual Euripides rather than the ersatz character imagined here.

I don't agree with 8o that Rudkin has always been a "safe" playwright - his earlier radio and TV plays (e.g. Penda's Fen), and the difficulties he had getting some of them produced, suggests otherwise, and I don't mind "middle class" drama, whatever that is, as long as it is interesting, unpredictable and dramatic. I didn't find there was enough that was any of those things in this play, not in the language, nor the ideas, nor the characters, nor the soundscape. I am still glad that R3 broadcast it - any lengthy new radio play these days is a cause for surprise and praise - and that I heard it, and I could not fault Michael Pennington's portrayal of the central character, but in the end it was a disappointment.

[french frank]

Must try and get back to it tonight. I do agree about the self-identifying aspect (but inspiration has to come from somewhere and nothing wrong in theory with that being a 'peg' on which to hang the next play). But I confess to having been a bit lost and having more of an 'impression' of what was going on, which makes it a bit difficult to pinpoint precise causes of dissatisfaction.

That it was a new play which was worthy of being commented on should not be disregarded, even if it fell short of expectations.

[eighthobstruction]

Yes I agree that a couple (at least) of my statements are a bit bizarre/flimsy....ref 'safe' I meant many scholars acquire a lifetime of work through connections and tenure (and talent/knowledge/reliabiltity)....ref m/c Drama, I meant a kind of nepotism re who gets chosen (a gut feeling rather than evidenced)....but neither of these statements merits further discussion....(w/c chip on my shoulder)

What did interest me was the 2 female voices - one peasant , one more cultured - which came out of the actress Mia Soteriou who was only identified as Oreivassa in cast list....How did read the identity of the voices?

[Honoured Guest]

What did interest me was the 2 female voices - one peasant , one more cultured - which came out of the actress Mia Soteriou who was only identified as Oreivassa in cast list....How did read the identity of the voices?

Was the first voice how she sounded, as a foreigner, to Euripedes and the second voice meant to indicate how she sounded locally to her own people? Tom Stoppard did that with the Czech characters in Rock 'n' Roll.

[french frank]

I'm not sure I still get the plot, point by point, but insofar as it's explaining how Euripides came to write Bacchai, rather than the play he had been intending to write for the king, that seems to be the plot, so the moral of Rudkin's play is the same as that of Euripides.

I haven't yet caught the 'two voices' of Oreivassa but since she is herself (or was in some earlier incarnation) one of the Bacchai - or followers of Dionysus - are the two voices a manifestation of that 'dual nature' of humans which the play is based on? (I've always thought of them as Apollonian and Dionysian, but the explanations seem to refer to Pentheus and Dionysus)

[french frank]

David Rudkin says we don't have to understand the whole background: "What matters here is the simple tale of an alienated old poet seeking solitude and peace in his sunset days, and having that peace blown asunder by one last wonderful and terrible inspiration."

Judging by what the 'more cultured' female voice was saying, she seemed to represent the mother of the tyrant 'king' (whose mountain it was). He was the equivalent of Pentheus who banned the worship of Dionysus, and the god took his revenge by getting his mother (Agave), along with the other Bacchai, to tear her son apart. So the cultured voice was the mother and the peasant one of the village women all of whom went on to the mountain to worship Dionysus until Pentheus put a stop to it. Why neither Pentheus nor Agave are named, I don't know - mystification? or just that as Rudkin says, it doesn't matter: Macedonia, the haunt of Dionysus and his worshippers, inspires him to write his final play.

A bit over elaborate for a radio play, Rudkin being a Greek scholar, but I'm happy to ignore the parallels between the writing careers of Euripides and himself.