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Books : Audio Cassettes : Authors A-Z : B : Bennett, Alan
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A decade after Alan Bennett's acclaimed first series of Talking Heads comes the eagerly anticipated follow up. Six more compassionate and acutely observed monologues performed by a terrific cast. Patricia Routledge, Julie Walters and Thora Hird all feature for a second time as, again using five women narrators alongside a solitary male, Bennett nags away at his pet obsessions in his own inimitable style. On the surface there is the usual mixture of chiropody, northern suburban life and an unnatural interest in soft furnishings. But underneath the semi- genteel facade lies the quiet agony of lives blighted and hopes dashed. An air of utter sadness pervades all these pieces from Miss Fozzard, who is quite straightforwardly transformed from a middle-aged and respectable spinster into a sort of foot fetish prostitute, to Celia, sitting alone in her shabby antique shop. Even after he had finished writing them Bennett says he: "left them in a drawer for a year as I felt they were too gloomy to visit upon the public". He needn't have worried. Gloomy or joyful doesn't matter so much as telling the truth and these wonderful monologues tell the truth. --Nick Wroe
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The live performances on these cassettes are drawn from shows 'Beyond The Fringe' did in the UK and the US. Cassette 1 contains the original 'Beyond the Fringe' show recorded in May 1961. Cassette 2 contains material from the November '62 and January '64 shows on Broadway which does not duplicate with the UK recording. paxton Whitehead replaced Jonathan Miller for the 1964 US performances and is featured with other cast members on tracks 1,3,4 and 5 on side 2
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Alan Bennett's award-winning series of six television monologues, Talking Heads, may have been first aired in 1988, but over a decade later it is still impossible to read these deeply moving and affectionate scripts without hearing the voices of the actors who played them. Maggie Smith as the alcoholic vicar's wife finding a semblance of happiness in an affair with an Indian shop owner, Patricia Routledge as the poisonous neighbour, Julie Walters as the over-the-hill dolly bird auditioning for a porn film and of course Thora Hird as Doris, the old lady alone in her home having fallen and broken her hip. All great performances and all made possible by Bennett's wonderfully observant and poignant scripts. Bennett rightly notes in his introduction to the pieces that, maybe apart from Doris, his narrators are artless in that they "don't quite know what they are saying and are telling a story to the meaning of which they are not entirely privy". But through their artlessnes they reveal more about Britain today and the stresses and strains placed upon ordinary people, than any number of docu-soaps that now claim to show us real life. --Nick Wroe
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Life imitates art in The Lady in the Van, the story of the itinerant Miss Shepherd, who lived in a van in Alan Bennett's driveway from the early1970s until her death in 1989. It is doubtful that Bennett could have made up the eccentric Miss Shepherd if he tried, but his poignant, funny but unsentimental account of their strange relationship is akin to his best fictional screen writing.Bennett concedes that "One seldom was able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation", but as the plastic bags build up, the years pass by and Miss Shepherd moves into Bennett's driveway, a relationship is established which defines a certain moment in late 20th-century London life which has probably gone forever. The dissenting, liberal, middle-class world of Bennett and his peers comes into hilarious but also telling collision with the world of Miss Shepherd: "there was a gap between our social position and our social obligations. It was in this gap that Miss Shepherd (in her van) was able to live".
Bennett recounts Miss Shepherd's bizarre escapades in his inimitable style, from her letter to the Argentinean Embassy at the height of the Falklands War, to her attempts to stand for Parliament and wangle an electric wheelchair out of the Social Services. Beautifully observed, The Lady in the Van is as notable for Bennett's attempts to uncover the enigmatic history of Miss Shepherd, as it is for its amusing account of her eccentric escapades. --Jerry Brotton
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Alan Bennett's award-winning series of six television monologues, Talking Heads, may have been first aired in 1988, but over a decade later it is still impossible to read these deeply moving and affectionate scripts without hearing the voices of the actors who played them. Maggie Smith as the alcoholic vicar's wife finding a semblance of happiness in an affair with an Indian shop owner, Patricia Routledge as the poisonous neighbour, Julie Walters as the over-the-hill dolly bird auditioning for a porn film and of course Thora Hird as Doris, the old lady alone in her home having fallen and broken her hip. All great performances and all made possible by Bennett's wonderfully observant and poignant scripts. Bennett rightly notes in his introduction to the pieces that, maybe apart from Doris, his narrators are artless in that they "don't quite know what they are saying and are telling a story to the meaning of which they are not entirely privy". But through their artlessnes they reveal more about Britain today and the stresses and strains placed upon ordinary people, than any number of docu-soaps that now claim to show us real life. --Nick Wroe
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Is it possible to read anything written by Alan Bennett in anything other than a poor attempt at THAT VOICE? With one of the most distinctive voices of any living English author, Alan Bennett and the audio book go together like fruitcake and cheese. (It's a Yorkshire thing.) Perhaps that explains why Bennett has so often ended up playing his own fictional characters; their mix of laconic poignancy, Northern realism and semi-autobiographical detail making them "hard to cast", as Bennett himself reveals in his notes on the origins of Father! Father! Burning Bright.In fact, this wry tale set in the tragicomic world of a Northern hospital, was written in 1982 as a BBC film subsequently entitled Intensive Care, although "care" plays a minor role in the last day or so in the life of Midgley Senior, unconscious and dying from a stroke complicated by hypothermia and pneumonia.
The story is told from Midgley Junior's perspective. When the phone call comes, informing him matter-of-factly that his father is not expected to last the night, he is half-way through parent's evening, struggling to deal with the irate father of a pupil he has labeled "hopeless". His own lifetime of under-achievement, spent all the while convinced he has let his father down in some way, prompts a tentative dash around the Leeds/Bradford ring road in order to mount a bedside vigil.
Determined to "make it right" before the end finally comes, morose Midgley must deal with the inefficiencies of the NHS and the attentions of largely disinterested family members. And then, in inimitable Bennett style, the unexpected occurs at a most inappropriate hour and Midgley is left feeling cheated, as though his father had finally played the trump card he'd been keeping in his pyjama pocket for just such a moment. After taking on the role of Midgley Junior himself in the BBC film, Bennett explains in his notes why he decided to write the story up in prose and how it then gathered dust in a drawer until a recent "tidying up" campaign. Oh, to have Bennett's drawers, harbouring such literary nuggets as this. --Carey Green
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The Laying on of Hands is vintage Alan Bennett, who has clearly mastered the art of the funny, wise and moving story that stands somewhere between a novel and a short story. The story revolves around the funeral of Clive Dunlop, a young man who has died in Peru under mysterious circumstances. As Father Geoffrey Joliffe prepares to lead the funeral, it seems "hard to say what Clive was, for instance, though taking note of the numerous celebrities who were still filing in, 'well-connected' would undoubtedly describe him". As Father Joliffe begins to speak, it soon emerges that the TV stars, politicians, singers, writers, and even the priest himself, who have gathered to mourn Clive were all beneficiaries of his "healing hands". Clive was a gifted masseur, although for many of his clients massage "was just a preliminary to a more protracted and intimate encounter and one which might, understandably, come a little dearer".Under the disapproving eye of one of his church superiors, Father Joliffe allows the funeral to descend into a free-for-all as Clive's friends and clients try to understand who he was, and worry over the nature of his mysterious death. Beautifully written in Bennett's laconic, adroit style, The Laying on of Hands suddenly creeps up on the reader as a funny and wise meditation on the big issues of sex, death, religion and HIV/AIDS. --Jerry Brotton