Do3 - Perpetual Light

[french frank]

Any comments yet? I hope to listen to it tonight - if not too busy ... Details here .

"It is the very near future.

A new way to remember the dead has been developed. The Maken Corporation can construct an interactive avatar - a perfectly realistic representation of the deceased - in cyberspace, using all the data available on an individual. At first, this appears to be a huge comfort for the bereaved. They can see and speak to their dead. The pain of mourning is eased. But it's a controversial issue. One that divides society and divides families.

When William Hellier dies suddenly his wife Barbara and daughter Rachel, not for the first time in their lives, come into conflict. Barbara goes to Maken and has an avatar of her dead husband created. But as she begins to spend more time with William - and more money at Maken - Rachel begins to believe that the corporation is preying on the grief of the vulnerable. Her cousin Jas, also has reasons to distrust Maken. He believes they have imprisoned William Hellier's soul. Can Jas persuade Rachel to destroy her father's avatar? And if he can, will Rachel go through with it once she comes face to face with the man she loved?"

[Russ]

I struggled through this: it's long (probably 20 minutes too long), full of ideas and thought-provoking, although not particularly dramatic or exciting.

Russ

[french frank]

I settled down to it, with my headphones, much in the spirit of a paid critic - not very keen, but had to be done.

In the end, I'm inclined to think it a very good, multi-layered play. It created a quite believable 'future world', populated still by familiar people with familiar traits: the bereaved wife, vulnerable because she couldn't reconcile herself to her loss, the pragmatic, atheistic daughter, the cousin who was signed up to some sort of dotty religious sect, and the 'deceased husband'. Oh, and the undertaker, of course... The subtleties of the relationships and the tensions created between them was done in a fascinating, absorbing way. Not high drama but an imaginatively woven tissue of inventions and interactions.

It started off at a disadvantage too: we all have our prejudices and one of mine is that a writer called Melissa something could interest me