Pearl (radio play)
Encyclopedia
Pearl is a 1978 radio play
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...

 by award-winning English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 John Arden
John Arden
John Arden is an award-winning English playwright from Barnsley . His works tend to expose social issues of personal concern. He is a member of the Royal Society of Literature....

. Set in England in the 1640s, the play concerns a young Irish political operative named Pearl, who, with playwright Tom Backhouse, attempts to sway the political climate in favor of the British Parliament, as part of a plan to achieve Irish sovereignty.

Production

Pearl was produced and broadcast on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 on July 3, 1978, with the following cast:
  • Pearl - Elizabeth Bell
  • Mother Bumroll - Paula Tilbrook
    Paula Tilbrook
    Paula Tilbrook is an English actress who has played Betty Eagleton in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale since 1994.In 1977, she made an appearance as Stella Rigby in Coronation Street, and followed this by appearances as Olive Taylor-Brown in the same show in 1978 and 1980. From 1991 to 1993, she...

  • Barnabas/Male Voice - David Mahlowe
  • Stage Manager/Casca/Actor - John Jardine
  • Grip - Geoffrey Banks
  • Sowse/Caesar - Ronald Herdman
  • Grimscar/1st Commoner - Peter Jeffrey
    Peter Jeffrey
    Peter Jeffrey was a British actor with many roles in television and film.Jeffrey was born in Bristol, the son of Florence Alice and Arthur Winfred Gilbert Jeffrey. He was educated at Harrow School and Pembroke College, Cambridge but had no formal training as an actor...

  • Backhouse/Soothsayer - David Calder
    David Calder (actor)
    David Calder is a British actor.Calder was born in Portsmouth, England, and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. His most high profile TV roles include Det. Insp...

  • Belladonna - Lynda Marchal
  • Duchess - Kathleen Helme
  • Catso/Marullus - Kenneth Alan Taylor
  • Katerina/Female Voice - Jane Knowles
  • Messenger/Flavius/Actor - Robert Morton

  • Music composed and conducted by Stephen Boxer
    Stephen Boxer
    Stephen Boxer is an English actor who has appeared in films, on television and on stage and is best known for appearing in the BBC One daytime soap opera Doctors...

  • Musicians Ephraim Segerman and members of the Northern Renaissance Consort
  • Produced by Alfred Bradley

Critical reception

The play won a Giles Cooper Award in 1978, and is considered one of the finest examples of the medium.

Publication

Hardcover and Paperback editions were published by Eyre Methuen in 1979.
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