Do3 - The Piano Lesson

[french frank]

Tonight, Sunday 27 Nov, 8.30pm: The second recent production of a play by August Wilson:

"In August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in Pittsburgh in 1936, an ancient upright piano carved with African faces dominates the parlour of Doaker Charles. Boy Willie and his partner Lymon have come up from the south to sell watermelons. Boy Willie has just got out of prison and he wants to buy the land his ancestors once worked as slaves but his sister is not about to sell the piano."

[aeolium]

I tried to listen to this and stuck with it for an hour, but I really found the dialects tricky to cope with, and to distinguish between at least some of the men speaking. The production I think has been taken from one that was very successful in America - but on the stage - and I think there's a world of difference between something working well on the stage and on the radio. For one thing, you can see who's talking on the stage! I don't think there is enough emphasis from producers in ensuring that those acting in radio dramas have sufficiently differentiated voices - there have been other productions where this has been a problem.

Did anyone have a more positive reaction to this production?

[DracoM]

Sorry, Alison, I didn't even get that far. I found it so hard to translate that by the time I had got an approximation, the scene was quickfire stuff five or six paragraphs further on. Gave up.

[french frank]

Sorry, Alison

You know something I don't?

Currently listening - decided to try for an impressionistic experience.

[aeolium]

My experience was impressionistic, though I hadn't decided to try for it

[french frank]

Same problems for me. I think it was certainly well acted, and the voices had a beautiful rhythm and momentum; there was also wit in the writing. But I'm afraid I didn't follow it all, especially at the beginning - a case for 'less authentic' accents? I may give it another go, but Sean O'Casey looms and I want to do a bit of background reading there.

[Russ]

Much the same reaction from me. There was a strong story here, but this failed the elementary number one rule of radio drama - namely to distinguish who is speaking. I feel the Radio 3 Drama Department is spending far too much time in the theatre and not enough time listening to the radio.

Russ

[french frank]

Much the same reaction from me. There was a strong story here, but this failed the elementary number one rule of radio drama - namely to distinguish who is speaking. I feel the Radio 3 Drama Department is spending far too much time in the theatre and not enough time listening to the radio.

I wonder how they recorded it - did the cast give a special performance in the theatre? Was it adapted a bit for a studio recording?

I suppose it's even-steven on cost, comparing the recording of a stage play in the US with starting a production here, with casting and rehearsals, from scratch. In this case, casting might well have been different if they had started out with radio in mind.

None of this detracts from the performances but the radio version didn't do justice, I think, to the play.

[Russ]

I wonder how they recorded it - did the cast give a special performance in the theatre? Was it adapted a bit for a studio recording?

It was recorded in The Crossroads Theatre, New Jersey. Kwame Kwei-Armah is currently based in Baltimore, so maybe he instigated the recording on a 'local' basis. There would seem to have been no special script adaptation for radio purposes.

Russ