Do3 - Sea Change

[Guest]

Looking forward to hearing this slice of coalition politics 1940-style. Could have some interesting contemporary resonances:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019pp88

Russ

[amateur51]

Looking forward to hearing this slice of coalition politics 1940-style. Could have some interesting contemporary resonances:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019pp88

Russ

Thanks for highlighting this Russ

[amateur51]

I forgot to listen to this last evening - how was it?

I'll Listen Again

[Russ]

I liked it a lot. It's a straightforward easy listen, and the characters are differentiated sufficiently. Despite the best efforts of his loyal spindoctor Joseph Ball, Chamberlain's naivety and dissolution is well portrayed as events rapidly overtake him. The production doesn't need any fancy gimmicks, the narrative itself is dramatic enough.

Russ

[amateur51]

I liked it a lot. It's a straightforward easy listen, and the characters are differentiated sufficiently. Despite the best efforts of his loyal spindoctor Joseph Ball, Chamberlain's naivety and dissolution is well portrayed as events rapidly overtake him. The production doesn't need any fancy gimmicks, the narrative itself is dramatic enough.

Russ

Many thanks, Russ!

[Dphillipson]

This was not a successful or convincing play, so far as it invoked (1) the conspiratorial insider approach to national and international politics (mainly Burgess and Ball) and (2) vulgar errors about events. The most notorious of these was that in the first six months of war "nothing happened:" the narrator said the army fought no one, "the navy sailed the seven seas and fought no one," and the RAF fought no one.
The essential point is that (as planned 1935-39) the RN and the RAF were in action from the first day of the war, and rather ineffectively. Two giant capital ships (carrier Courageous and battleship Royal Oak) were sunk in the first weeks of the war and the RAF sacrificed about half of Bomber Command (theoretically Britain's main long-range offensive weapon) in unsuccessful bombing attacks by day. As also foreseen, the army had little to do except deploy an expeditionary force to defend an ally -- but it is horridly untrue to say the RN and RAF "fought no one."

[french frank]

Welcome, Dp! Any response from anyone?

[aeolium]

I have not listened to this yet, though I will give it a go as I have liked other plays by John Fletcher.

I think the remarks by Dphillipson are apposite, though, and reinforce my concern about historical plays where the historical verisimilitude is an important component of the drama. In historical plays where this is not the case, such as those by Shakespeare and Marlowe, or plays like Shaw's Saint Joan, then it is possible to concentrate on the characters, the language and the drama almost divorced from their historical reality. But is this possible with plays like Sea Change? Is there not always the nagging thought that really it was not like this at all? Not merely in the accuracy of the historical narrative, but also in the language, the personalities of the protagonists, which are hard enough to recreate in a straightforward historical documentary. Perhaps this is the wrong way to approach the play but I would find inaccuracies and anachronisms in this play more of a distraction than, for instance, in Saint Joan.

[Dphillipson]

I have liked other plays by John Fletcher. . . . Is there not always the nagging thought that really it was not like this at all? Not merely in the accuracy of the historical narrative, but also in the language, the personalities of the protagonists, which are hard enough to recreate in a straightforward historical documentary. Perhaps this is the wrong way to approach the play but I would find inaccuracies and anachronisms in this play more of a distraction than, for instance, in Saint Joan.

The same John Fletcher (I suppose) dramatised for Radio 4 currently Nicholas Monsarrat's gigantic The Cruel Sea (445 pages in Penguin) i.e. selected what he thought might be the best scenes for two hours of speech (say 20,000 words.) Part 1 was marred by anachronisms, notably "up-market" (for the protagonist's job on Fleet Street) and SONAR for ASDIC (when ASDIC was used correctly earlier in the same scene.) I expected the radio producer either to spot these or to know the book better.