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The Cocktail Party

Episodes
1

BBC WS - T S Eliot's 'The Cocktail Party'

More about it

Adapted by John Foley

Technical presentation by Simon Moorcraft

Production by Alison Rees

Directed by Marion Nancarrow

Broadcast December 14, 2003

Coded from tape at 128/44.1

Thanks to Usenet for this file

REPOST BY THUNDERGUST

(Features an early performance by a certain Mr Cumberbatch!)

For me, the best of Eliot's plays. More natural -

less stylised - than the others. This production

flows along quite nicely.

Superficially a comedy of manners, a party host's

spouse has gone missing, guests are arriving and

appearances have to be maintained. The uninvited

guest, a psychiatrist, arrives, sets things to

rights, and the host's mistress moves on.

The deeper theme is that, having made commitments,

we should make the best of things. Which seems to

me to be Eliot's conscience playing up about his

troubled first marriage. Here matters are resolved.

In life his wife died in the lunatic asylum to

which he'd had her committed.

Cast

Jeremy Child

Ian McDermott

Diane Quick

Sheila Gish

Malcolm Sinclair

Emily Brune

Benedict Cumberbatch

Rachel Atkins

Philip Vox

Episodes, in broadcast order

  1. BBC WS - The Cocktail Party-sp7

    No date given · 1 h 28 min

Where it comes from 1

The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.

  1. The Cocktail Party

    Old Time Radio · 1 episode here · archive.org

    the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.

From the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive, uploaded by the collector named.

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