The Express on Sunday, 8 February, 1998
RADIO REVIEW by Ben Garner
SHEETS IN THE FRIGDE? It's a good play
On Monday night Michele Celeste's play A VALENTINE FOR EXECUTION (BBC Radio Four) , nimbly directed by Peter Kavanagh, took just under an hour to sweep through 25 years in the lives of two condemned political prisoners, and a woman and her priest back home. The plot turned on deceptive love letters. Michael Maloney (Pedrillo) and Pip Donaghy (Saul) were respectively impassioned and unscrupulous as the ill-matched cell-mates, but it was Adjoah Andoh (Pedrillo's girlfriend Jose-Manuela) who carried the real theme, the power of words.
A rapid succession of final audio snapshots - a prison farewell, school bell, firing squad, mass demonstration - rounded-off the political action, as Jose-Manuela privately declared her renewed faith in language.
All this would have cost a fortune to film and its big idea - our best actions can spring from a sincere misunderstanding of others' words - would have not been the very fabric of the action. Like Jose-Manuela, all we had were words from the dark. I think Madga tried to tell me about her day somewhere in the middle, but I was miles away.
|