| Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, Hinterland, Passion in Port Talbot |
Television Arts Feature |
| Television , Theatre and History of Wales , December 15, 2020 |
2020 was the year with no precedent, where reviews of live performance ended abruptly in winter. It was a year of television. And a year of looking-back. A guide to the first years of writing on television. 29 December 2015: Documentaries on Theatre "The programme was dull stuff and I tried Soho. New writing, after all, is theatre’s lifeblood. Dull too and I switched to Kendal and even there I did not last the half-hour. As documentaries they looked economically budgeted. No arts journalists were on camera to give any bite and flavour. The editing looked to action to fill the time. A contributor to the Guardian’s discussion was succinct: “The series spoke volumes about the cultural disconnect of commissioning at the BBC”. 15 September 2015 Documentary on 40 years of Theatr Felinfach “Euros Lewis provides the historical background of the extraordinary fecundity of home-created theatre. Ceredigion between the world wars had one hundred and fifty amateur companies. Little Llandewi Brefi alone had three companies. Aeron Davies and Gret Jenkins recall audiences of four to five hundred, some members walking for miles, cramming into the spaces, even pressing against windows to see in.” 22 July 2015: A Renoir at Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire “Renoir – Pierre-Auguste rather than Jean or Claude – occupies a special place in Wales. His fellow Impressionist, and his senior by two years, Sisley may have been the one to have married in Cardiff Town Hall and the one to have painted nineteen pictures of Penarth and Langland Bay. But Renoir’s “Blue Lady” in the National Museum, at its time one of the most expensive purchases made by the Davies Sisters, has become, a century on, the most popularly loved in the Bequest.” 30 June 2015: Marc Edwards “Patagonia” “Patagonia” has three virtues; all play to the strengths of its medium. The most obvious is that it captures the visual appearance of the geography. The camera cuts to signs of streets named Juan C Evans and Michael D Jones. The engineering prowess and achievement of the first settlers are shown in a sequence where Huw Edwards stands by a canal. The Welsh creation has indeed been, after the multiple early trials and difficulties, to make bloom the Patagonian steppe of scrub and thorn.” 12 May 2015: James Graham & Donmar Theatre Donmar Theatre “the Vote” “It is a conception of boldness, not great television drama, because it does not have the medium’s tools of cut and edit, but fascinating, and cheering, on several levels. At a time when indigenous television drama itself has given up the ghost, and sagged into cops and spies, bio-drama and candle-lit Heritage, it is evidence that there is a vitalism to a plain old analogue art form, feet tramping on wood.” 15 October 2014: Owen Sheers “Dylan Thomas: A Poet's Guide” & “Under Milk Wood in Pictures. Peter Blake Does Dylan” “The Dylan Thomas centenary has launched a thousand events. ‘Dylan Thomas A Poet's Guide’ is one with a difference. It is about the poetry. It is presented by an authoritative voice who knows the subject. A film about a poet gets to be actually presented by a poet, who meets a range of speakers who are also poets. Qualified people who know, and care about, the subject; it is quite a good idea for a documentary.” 13 October 2014 “Dylan Thomas: A Poet at War” "Director Dafydd O'Connor has secured the service of Matthew Rhys for narration. The range of interviewees marries archive material, Caitlin Thomas and John Ormond, with present day commentators. Jeff Towns, Hannah Ellis, Gwen Watkins, biographers Paul Ferris and Andrew Lycett all contribute. Julia Cleverdon tells that ‘Under Milk Wood’ probably only exists by virtue of her father’s strong-mindedness. Producer Douglas Cleverdon locked the author up for the night and forced it out of him.” 05 February 2014 Brith Gof Documentary on “Y Gododdin” “Producer-directors Mike Parker and Martin McCarthy followed Brith Gof and the path-breaking “Y Gododdin” with a single camera. They were there on a freezing 1988 December’s night in Cardiff’s abandoned Rover factory and then at subsequent performances in an Italian sand quarry, a former crane factory in Hamburg and finally in Glasgow. The last venue has symbolic overtones, comments a scholar in the film, as the original tribesmen in defeat fled Dunedin to the neighbouring kingdom of Strathclyde.” 25 November 2013: “Y Gwyll/ Hinterland” “It would have been easy to shoot the Ystwyth and Rheidol valleys in their spring colours and make it into a heritage event. “Shot with real intelligence; simple, subtle and with both eyes focussed on the feeding of the atmospheric cloud over the piece.” The treatment of Ceredigion is true. It is not the only version, but it is a true one. Upland buildings can have a tatterdemalion quality. The windfarm plot and the background conifers are reminders that National Park status was snatched away from the Cambrians in a last-minute manoeuvre.” 05 August 2013: Bio-drama on Richard Burton “Burton and Taylor” “Original British drama’ run the advertisements that clog television and radio. Words have their meanings. ‘Original’ indicates that a writer or a director has had an idea that has been gradually brought to fruition. An acted-out documentary, or quasi-documentary, on celebrities stretches the adjective ‘original’ into areas where it begins to blur. Structure, rising rhythm, human truth, ambiguity, moral tension, narrative excitement and denouement. All are lacking in the bio-drama. They burble along until they end and then require captions at the credits to complete their narrative.” 31 January 2012: “Baker Boys” “Baker Boys 2” is television. It does what only television drama can do. It fires off a series of rapid, inter-cut sub-plots within one over-arching dramatic situation. Structurally, it pivots between private and public action. It does parents and teenagers very well. It captures the brittle nature of the bonds between men. The director handles ensemble scenes with aplomb. A double celebratory night out in the city gives a nice kick to the watery stuff put out by Cardiff’s official promoters.” 23 January 2012: Bio-drama on Richard Burton "S4C’s film for Christmas covers a single day in June 1968 in Switzerland. On that day Richard Burton’s elder brother Ifor fell and broke his neck. The devisers of this piece wander in that no-man's land of dramatised documentary. The facts of that day may never be known. That is enough; they need not be known. So the film is neither documentary, since it is not tethered to those facts that the biographers record. But nor is it drama with that genre’s complexity and wider resonance.” 27 June 2011: Documentary on “the Passion in Port Talbot” “Ghost-like figures, they talk of the dead who have gone before them. Cor Serenata sings “Ain't No Grave”. The Solar Dance Group and West Glamorgan Youth Theatre perform. A group of bell-ringers plays a lovely melody. There is the roofer who is to be the inspiration for the character of God.” 17 June 2011 Documentary on “the Passion in Port Talbot” “The Passion” was more than a success. It was an event. According to Siriol Jenkins, in her measured voice-over, by the time Sunday arrived “Newspapers around the world are printing pictures of this unique event. People have travelled here from all over the UK and abroad to witness the last day.” It will never be known for sure quite how many thousands were there.” 14 February 2011: “Baker Boys” “There is no reason why drama from Wales should not stand alongside that of Paul Abbott and Jimmy McGovern. For a revisit some drama, villainy, fire, ambition, and plain old craftsmanship, please. If the intention is that the project be a low-aiming piece of parochialism that cowers this side of the Severn then that is not enough.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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