Radio review - Drama

Published Friday 22 August 2008 at 13:05 by Moira Petty

Balzac’s novels are thick with detail - who wore what and how they wallpapered their homes, sandwiched between more weighty analysis of human nature. So how was all this, plus some pretty sharp turns of fortune, going to be crammed into a two-part dramatisation of The Black Sheep? Perhaps with walk-on parts for Gok Wan and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, with their appraisals of what was a la mode in Paris and the provinces in 1842, followed by some philosophical musings on moral fibre from Alain de Botton?

At first it seemed as if Bruce Young’s production and Chris Dolan’s dramatisation was going to take Balzac at his word and give us every last item on the inventory. Artist’s smock and air of smugness worn by the good-hearted son, Joseph - check. Napoleonic uniform and rogueish twinkle paraded by the dashing, wastrel son, Philippe - check. Halo and something picked up for a song at Primark for their mother Agathe after being fleeced left, right and centre - check.

Geoffrey Whitehead’s august-sounding narrator dominated the opening, clucking around like a hen with too many eggs to lay. Matthew Pidgeon’s initially timorous Joseph was given life by Geoff and Balzac, with the information that you might have thought him ugly, but actually he “has a face of moral significance”, whatever that may look like. Joseph shivered. He didn’t waste money on coal. This was a man “prepared to suffer for his art”. After that, I was all for the arrival of the swaggering Philippe (Thomas Arnold) just back from war and about to set the casino tables of Paris alight. For that purpose, he raided Joseph’s petty cash tin (he really should have splashed out on the coal) and then took what was left of his mother’s fortune.

Poor Agathe, though, was not the greatest judge of character. Playing her, Briony McRoberts did a good turn in deep sighing. Where was Alain de Botton when she needed his help? She had already moved to more modest accommodation to pay the debts of her live-in companion and life-long friend. This lottery-playing aunty figure to Agathe’s sons was rather spectacular - optimisim and recklessness seesawing out of control. In her deathbed scene, after she had been swindled out of the lottery jackpot, Phylida Law moaned, “Three million francs”, over and over. I haven’t witnessed such anguish since I saw an old film of Olivier wrestling with Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy.

So it all built up to a tremendous pitch, what with the groaning, the giddy swingometer of fate and the thickly-layered observations, which gradually rounded the edges of the characters into the three-dimensional creations in Balzac’s novel. But you could see where Jeffrey Archer got his idea for Cain and Abel from, not to mention EastEnders’ scriptwriters when they dreamt up the Mitchell brothers and their beleagured ma.

Injustice reverberated powerfully in This is a True Story, culled from the death row writings of subnormal Howard Neal, framed for murder and portrayed in a masterful monologue by Tom Wright.

But one of the plays of the year must be Ian Kershaw’s hautingly delicious comedy, Alan and Jean’s Incredible Journey. An agoraphobic husband and his long-suffering wife took their holiday in the bedroom, his snap of her bleeding the radiator a vacation highlight. There was a strong narrative pulse as they surveyed their memories, the writing tender and wry. George Costigan’s Alan was an essay in vulnerability and Julie Hesmondhalgh reached comic peaks as Jean, rhapsodising over a wedding announcement by her lesbian daughter, only to enquire eventually: “Who’s the lucky man?”

DETAILS

The Black Sheep - R4, from Sunday, August 17

This is a True Story - R4, Friday, August 15

Alan and Jean’s Incredible Journey - R4, Tuesday, August 19