Radio review

Published Monday 30 June 2008 at 16:10 by Moira Petty

If some far-off colony of aliens were to have been listening in to recent offerings from radio drama, it might have been of comfort to them. The overriding impression they would have gathered about human life is that when we’re not engaged in full-scale warfare or blasting each other out of the skies, we’re involved in one-on-one duplicity. No time, then, for inter-galactic battles, our Radio 4-friendly aliens might surmise, when we’re so busy trying to get one over on each other.

Only rarely can a higher moral purpose be discerned. Published in 1938, Kressemann Taylor’s prescient story, Address Unknown, adapted for radio by Tim Dee, quite brilliantly detailed the rise of Nazism and the gradual subversion of a nation’s thinking through an insidious political philosophy.

Her story is told through the soured friendship of two German ex-patriots who were once close colleagues in California. One returned to his homeland just after Hitler achieved power while the other, of Jewish stock, remained in the USA. Played by Henry Goodman and Patrick Malahide with increasing intensity, the two men were seen through their correspondence which revealed increasingly divergent views. When the actress sister of the Jewish German man travelled to Berlin with her company at a time of blatant anti-Semitism, her brother’s friend callously sent her to her death at the hands of stormtroopers.

Back in the USA, her grieving brother formulated a deadly revenge. He continued to write to his one-time friend, although he knew that this correspondence from a Jew would mark out the recipient as a traitor. His letters were written in transparent code which made the two men appear to be collaborators. There was a huge sense of stillness as the play reached the point where one of his letters was returned with ‘Address unknown’ scrawled across it - just like his letters to his sister, which had alerted him to her fate. We were left to judge if he should have carried out his own brand of nemesis: did that make him as bad as Nazi-sympathisers?

Nell Leyshon’s drama War Bride starred Charlotte Emmerson as the apparently naive girl who ran away from her rural life to marry and emigrate to Canada just after the end of World War II. On board the ship, she ran into an old boyfriend and told him that her new husband was mistreating her. These scenes were played out for real but who was kidding who? The play cleverly subverted our expectations when the bride was revealed as a cunning vixen.

Gary Brown based his play, Beat The Dog In Its Own Kennel, on documents which revealed a scheme to kill Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in the same post-War period. From this he built an edifice of plot and counter-plot in which the principals - Jonathan Tafler as a young East End Jew, and Richard Katz as a Palestinian - played cat and mouse but were no more than pawns in a much bigger game of espionage.

Charlotte Greig’s The Confessions featured Lynne Seymour in an intriguing tale of covert art world deals, sexual licence and the enlightening power of readings from 18th-century philosopher Rousseau.

The Day The Planes Came, by David and Caroline Stafford, told of how air passengers were diverted to Newfoundland as the 9/11 terrorist attack took place. I’m glad they weren’t squeamish about the backdrop to their story of a put-upon divorcee (Rosie Cavaliero) who found love and a joy for life again. But this world event overshadowed the personal story. Couldn’t she have found catharsis and a new man at B&Q?

DETAILS

Address Unknown - R4 Friday June 20

War Bride - R4 Wednesday July 2

Beat The Dog In Its Own Kennel - R4 Saturday June 21

The Confessions - R4 Wednesday June 25

The Day The Planes Came - R4 Tuesday June 24