Cover of Big Drum

Big Drum

by Arthur Wing Pinero

Chapter 1 of 6 Act 1

0:00 55:15
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Running time
4 h 28 min
Language
English
Readers
Adrian Stephens, Alan Mapstone, Availle, Devorah Allen, Eva Davis (d. 2025) and 12 others

Chapters

About this recording

Another Pinero play. Biting satire this time, ironic comedy - not a farce. The Big Drum, a novel being written by Phil, one of the main characters, is "an attempt to portray the struggle for notoriety—for self-advertisement—we see going on around us to-day." "Oh, I believe any world would content me that's totally different from the world I've lived in so long; any world that isn't flat and stale and stifling; that isn't made up of shams, and petty aims and appetites; any world that—well, such a world as you used to picture, Phil, when you preached your gospel to a selfish, common girl under the chestnuts in the Allée de Longchamp and the Champs-Elysées! ... I've been waiting—waiting for you—in my dreams—for ten years! "

- Summary by ToddHW

NOTE: There is an Author's Preface. Because it contains spoilers, it has been put at the end of the Act 4 file.

Cast list:

Philip Mackworth: Nemo

Sir Randle Filson, Knight: ToddHW

Bertram Filson (his son): Tomas Peter

Sir Timothy Barradell, Baronett: alanmapstone

Robert Roope: Adrian Stephens

Collingham Green: Larry Wilson

Leonard Westrip (Sir Randle's secretary): Shashank Jakhmola

Alfred Dunning (of Sillitoe and Dunning's Private Detective…