Big Drum
Chapter 1 of 6 Act 1
- 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…