| A Look-Back and Guide |
Radio Arts Feature |
| Radio , Theatre, Literature, Cultural History , October 15, 2025 |
Reviews of radio below: 16 October 2025: Love’s Moment: RS Thomas and Mildred Eldridge * * * * 18 November 2021: Horatio Clare “Jan Morris: Writing a Life” “Cities, countries and epoch all treated with magnificence”, says Clare, with “scholarship and the authenticity of the moment.” Morris made herself a writer's land pitched between journalism and literature. " * * * * 7 January 2021: Sir Nicholas Hytner on the Year of Closure "It's been agony. There's been no upside to it all. It's what brings people together, what people have enjoyed together that has been missed. Some want to watch theatre, some want to watch sport, and some want to dance. It's a terrible, terrible deprivation y toto millions that they can't dance, or go to a cafe, or go to a restaurant." * * * * 13 November 2020: Lorne Campbell, Louise Miles-Payne, Julia Barry, Arwel Gruffydd on Theatre and Closure “It's deeply disappointing that cinemas, museums, galleries are being allowed to open and theatres are not. A huge amount of careful and rigorous work has gone on in organisations across the country in order to open venues safely. Test events have been run. Incredibly careful thinking and preparation has been made. It's unjust and unjustifiable that we're not being able to move towards reopening." * * * * 18 January 2020: Gary Raymond's 2019 Retrospective “In broadest terms I always ask myself whether Wales is punching above its weight or whether it is falling short.” * * * * 3 November 2019: Radio Wales' Neglect of the North "True to Form: No Interest from BBC Wales in Theatre Beyond Cardiff" * * * * 8 August 2019: Siân Owen, Daf James, Remy Beasley, Alan Harris at Edinburgh “Sad, charming, not patronising, wonderful euphoric moment, whoops and cheers, very honest, authentic piece of writing, wonderfully performed, really fresh, amazing so much packed into 55 minutes” * * * * 15 May 2019: Robert Icke, For & Against "Moral idealism results in wreckage and pain. That is not just topical, a less interesting and a lesser purpose anyhow, than perennial. The foregrounding of virtue of intent over pragmatism of result does no service to the arts or politics of Wales...we would be better off with debate." * * * * 29 April 2019: BBC Radio Wales Under Critique "Time for some serious ambition and proper leadership from our national public service broadcaster. Mostly flabby interviewing and a lack of interest in, never mind rigorous scrutiny of, those who run Wales. It was not always thus and there’s an irony that as devolved powers have grown, the flagship news programme has become less, not more, interested in robust journalism about Wales.” * * * * 22 March 2019: Welshness with Dafydd Iwan, Mike Parker "We're not the same. South Wales is a very different country to North Wales really. In the Middle Ages it was a separate country, Deheubarth. To me Cardiff is quite a foreign place...South Wales is a foreign country to me.” * * * * 20 March 2019: Money & Being a Writer "The question endures, how to balance the wish to write with the wish to earn. The incomes of full-time writers have halved in real terms since 2005." * * * * 24 February 2019: Owain Glyndwr "Wales had a natural disadvantage in the population imbalance. That of England was two and a half million in England against around two hundred thousand in Wales. With more money from parliament he was able to spend £12,000 a year on establishing permanent garrisons in Wales. That was the key to military success. But as a coda Huw Pryce comments on the fact that Glyndwr was never betrayed. In the context of the era that was highly unusual." * * * * 13 February 2019: “Home, I'm Darling” "She captures very well the way that people may protect themselves against the future by anchoring themselves in the past. A play about how we all need to believe things that aren't true in order to get by." * * * * 19 January 2019: Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch & Mab Jones "Working women are largely absent from the historiography of Wales. Welsh Ladies changes gear to look at women in culture. Gwerfyl Mechain, who died in 1502, is remembered as the oldest known woman poet. She is volubly criticised in performance at the palace of the Bishop of Bangor. The woman poet is referred to as shouting, the translation into English “a horrible hag”. * * * * 2 January 2019: Arts Retrospective of 2018 "Tin Shed...blew everyone away by putting on an adaptation of “Moby Dick” hanging in the gondola of the Transporter Bridge. There have also been some fantastic successes for Welsh productions during UK-wide award seasons for both Theatre Clwyd and the Sherman Theatre." * * * * 15 December 2018: “Alice in Wonderland” at the Sherman “You could see the kids really lighting up. The pace of it and the energy of it was so frenetic. You see the set and it looks so dramatic." * * * * 22 October 2018: Chippy Lane with Lucy Rivers “Lucy is a Powerhouse. She Can Do It All.” * * * * 18 October 2018: Kwame Kwei-Armah at the Young Vic "The word “joy” is recurrent. It is a word that hardly dares speak its name in the official theatre of Wales. Its absence is a reason why we are where we are. It makes all the difference. It is why audiences and critics alike adore “Sugar Baby.” It is the difference, why the Sherman and Theatr Clwyd scooped UK Theatre awards this last weekend." * * * * 2 October 2018: Chippy Lane, Tim Price with Katie Elin-Salt & Jordan Bernarde "The discussion turns again to the theme that has prickled for years. No infrastructure for writers. Not a literary manager to be seen. The greatest schooling ground of actors anywhere in the world is bereft of the writers to turn that power into culture." * * * * 16 July 2018: Aneurin Bevan- Great Lives "Kinnock recalls at the age of eight being chosen to receive from Bevan a gift of money for the Sunday School. On another occasion the young Kinnock was in a pub visited by Bevan and Jennie Lee. In alarm at being reported to parents he and his friends scuttled for it." * * * * 5 June 2018: Owen Sheers: Theatre at Hay Poet meets poet. Owen Sheers and Keith Douglas. * * * * 4 June 2018: Francesca Rhydderch on "Orlando" "Rhydderch cuts to her own first encounter with the book. The time was her teenagehood. The location, a town of steel and tinplate, was one where masculinity was clear-cut. “The gender lines of my youth”, she says, “were like a pair of railway tracks, never touching, always running parallel with a certain distance between them.” * * * * 12 May 2018: Twm Morys & Cynghanedd "Eurig Salisbury learned the craft at age thirteen. Classes in cynghanedd are thriving with a society and magazine. Mererid Hopwood looks at other languages. The nature of stresses make it hard in English while Spanish is kinder. She cites Goethe's “fliesse, fliesse, liebe Fluss”. * * * * 29 April 2018: Gillian Clarke at Home ”On the making of poetry she cites R S Thomas: “I take a pen and paper to see what words will do.” She follows on to describe “the magic of the pen, the bare paper and the first words.” Poets are absorbed by words and she is entranced by the very names of grasses- fescue, quaking grass, bent." * * * * 17 April 2018: BBC Wales “The Review Show” "The tone was critical without acerbity. “Plodding Manics-by-numbers tracks” thought Gary Raymond “don't really know where they belong.” The critics travel to Clwyd for the next programme. That is a good sign, the north in general being badly under-reported." * * * * 15 February 2018: National Theatre Wales "The relationship between BBC Wales and its theatre is unhelpful. BBC Scotland is a participant in CATS, the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland. BBC Wales does not participate, does not attend, and does not report. In its place its occasional foray into theatre has been principally one of promoting National Theatre Wales. To an outside eye it reads as though television executives are in a gaggle of mutual support. The tone was set early, in 2010. Documentaries on theatre are rare but in that year 30 minutes of documentary were broadcast. Its tone was one of stupefying sycophancy, Green Bay its helpful maker." * * * * 27 December 2017: Feature on Theatre Lighting “Illuminating the Stage” ripples with memorable quotation. “Without light there is no space” says Robert Wilson. Of the stage in darkness Peter Brook “it is not the darkness of the grave, it is the darkness of expectation.” Simon McBurney: “I think that theatre begins with light. The moment there is fire there is theatre.” The fire casts shadow and “that is the metaphor for the human being.” * * * * 30 August 2017: Antonia Quirke on Acting “Don't do things, just think”. Others “it's about being vulnerable” and “it's about the ability to transform and it can be measured and taught and it can be insisted upon.” Michael Sheen: “technique, skill, emotional truth...all have to be in the service of story...to deliver story.” * * * * 30 July 2017: Anniversary of the End of Theatre Censorship "The reader for the Lord Chamberlain sent his view “It was a revolting amateur play” he wrote “...it is about a bunch of brainless ape-like yobs...” Of the management at the Royal Court “it does seem that the taste of Messrs Devine and Richardson has gone rancid.” * * * * 9 April 2017: Edward Thomas "He was the first of his family not to have Welsh as a first language. Like so many others work, in this case the railways, had prompted migration westward. Although London-born, Thomas spent long periods of holiday and after in the area bounded by Pontardulais and Ammanford. His university tutor was O M Edwards. His children were called Merfyn, Bronwen and Myfanwy." * * * * 20 January 2017: Six American Authors on the 45th President "Richard Ford: The fact that I was so completely wrong about it has made me doubt what I understand about my country; that doubt has got me interested again in finding out the ways in which I am wrong about it." * * * * 3 June 2016: Royal Court at 60 Years "The interviewing kicks off curiously. To Vicky Featherstone “do you have an obligation to stage new writing? Is it part of the job spec?” Er…haven’t we tuned into a celebration of what is probably the world’s centre for new drama?" * * * * 29 May 2013: Malcolm Pryce Dramatised "The writing has been stripped of its black comedy. The error in the radio writing, is that it wants to be nice." * * * * 15 August 2012: Publication of Richard Burton's Dairies "Inner Voices- the Burton Diaries” is a mesmerising hour. It soars for a simple reason. Radio focuses on what made Richard Burton great, his voice." * * * * 5 March 2008: Journey from Caernarfon to Newport with Castells on Identity "Monoglot English-speakers in Newport express a vicarious sense of pride in Cymraeg. There is a sense that it too belongs to them, even if no more than a handful of words might be intelligible." |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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