Talking Heads: No. 1 (BBC Radio Collection)
by Alan Bennett
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alan BennettPerformer: Alan Bennett
Performer: Patricia Routledge
Performer: Maggie Smith
Performer: Stephanie Cole
Performer: Julie Walters
Performer: Thora Hird
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown)
Format: Audiobook
Published: 2005-10-03
ISBN: 0563558946
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks Ltd
Book Reviews of Talking Heads: No. 1 (BBC Radio Collection)
Book Review: If you're a lover of characters, if you're a writer, if you're...
Summary: 5 Stars
I was lucky enough to see the original broadcasts of these mini-plays in the UK in early 1989, and I found a copy of the telescripts at Foyle's and snapped if up. For the uninitiated, these pieces aren't just monologues, they're little separate worlds, each peopled by one character who tells his/her story. In "Her Big Chance", Leslie (a sparklingly ditzy, yet deeply innocent Julie Walters) tells us how exciting and "really interesting" it's been, working on a big film (as "Topless Girl #2, it turns out). "Are we on cans, Roger, I said, because if we are, I'd just like some direction..." Deluded but optomistic, she sits, all dolled up and thrilled, waiting for the call to stardom that will never come, while the crew is out on the bay filming "establishing shots".
In "A Cream Cracker Under the Setee", an elderly woman who's fallen and can't get up, muses on her now-dead husband, and conceives of the notion--as plain to us as her predicament--that she tidied herself out of a marriage.
My favorite, "Soldiering On", is told in the jaunty, bucked-up words of a comfortable Home Counties matron whose husband's just died, and whose son, Giles, has kindly taken over the finances: "No can do, mummy, we must tighten our belts!" A year later, in a boarding house, she admits, sheepishly, that "I suppose Giles has been a bit of a scamp--". Meanwhile Margaret, her lumpish, virtually catatonic daughter, has for some reason blossomed after her father's death. Then the other shoe drops...
"How do I feel? Sorry for her, of course. Sorry for HIM, too, come to that..."
And then, holding up a Walkman: "This is my new toy! I get tapes from the lending library in the High Street. And I'll listen to anything. No fear....Fan!"
And then: "I wouldn't want you to thing I'm a tragic woman. I'm not the type..."
Maybe I've quoted Bennett wrong--my copy's still packed away from the last move. There are several other "stories"--some funny, some apalling, but all laced through with gentle pathos, and a very BRITISH knowledge of some very universal foibles. And that's why Alan Bennett is still the best, as David Sedaris is here. Each man knows us all to be both the victims and instigators of our own fates.
Summary of Talking Heads: No. 1 (BBC Radio Collection)
This title features: "A Chip in the Sugar" with Alan Bennett, "A Lady of Letters" with Patricia Routledge, "Bed Among the Lentils" with Anna Massey, "Soldiering On" with Stephanie Cole, "Her Big Chance" with Julie Walters, and "A Cream Cracker Under the Settee" with Thora Hird. Alan Bennett' six monologues are poignant, funny and written with the author's powerful insight into human nature. As a TV series, a book, a stage play and an audio, "Talking Heads" has become a phenomenon.Drama Books
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