This series was reviewed in Realtime at http://www.realtimearts.net/article/101/10173
ABC Radio National's Hindsight and Airplay programs have joined forces to present Playing the 20th Century, a new series which charts a century of Australian theatre. The series will showcase eight landmark plays, from Federation to the millennium, which have been selected from the archives of ABC Radio Drama. Each production will be accompanied by a documentary by Catherine Gough-Brady or Regina Botros which explores the work, its author, and social and political background in which the play was written.
The series commences on Sunday 19 December at 2pm and casts a reflective eye over our preoccupations, anxieties and social permutations, as they have been manifest on the Australian stage, over the past one hundred years. Presented by Andrew McLennan.
Four of the documentaries accompanying the rebroadcasts below are by myself - Please tune in! Or visit the series website after the braodcast date to listen.
The Time Is Not Yet Ripe by Louis Esson: Esson would turn in his grave to know the play he is best known for is his 1912 Shavian tale of politics and pre-revolutionary socialist values. Set at a federal election, with Doris Quiverton as the candidate for Wombat.
Fire on the Snow by Douglas Stewart: Douglas Stewart's stunning verse play, written especially for radio, was first broadcast in 1941. Scott and his failed Antarctic expedition embody the complex hero that emerged in WWII and the Cold War.
Loss of a Friend by Cablegram by Frank Moorhouse: A man and a woman stand in a hotel room somewhere in Portugal. They used to be married. A knock at the door and an international cablegram is delivered.
Diving for Pearls by Katherine Thomson: In this play, Den and Barbara search for their place in a world against the backdrop of the Illawarra steelworks. Everything is changing around them, can they change as well?
