SCREEN PLAYS
Oedipus
Classics on TV: BFI Southbank programme, 7 June 2012
Tonight sees the first programme in the five night Screen Plays season Classics on TV: Greek Tragedy on the Small Screen at BFI Southbank. A few tickets are still available for the 6.10pm showing which features Oedipus the King (BBC/The Open University, 1977) and Play of the Month: King Oedipus (BBC, 1972); you can book via the BFI website. We would like to try an experiment and invite anyone who is at the screening to contribute their thoughts about the programmes in the Comments below. Any and all responses would be welcome, however brief – and Amanda Wrigley and I will also be offering some further thoughts. Continue reading
Greek plays: Oedipus the King (BBC / The Open University, 1977)
This post takes as its focus the BBC Television transmission of a production of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King, directed by Richard Callanan, which starred Patrick Stewart in the title role and Rosalie Crutchley as Jocasta. This production was one of sixteen which were co-produced with The Open University to support the work of distance-learning students who were enrolled on its course A307 Drama, but being transmitted on television it will also, of course, have reached a wider public audience in its annual transmissions over the five years of the year-long course’s life from 1977 (albeit one that happened to be watching BBC2 early on Sunday mornings). This blog post is another (small) chapter of my Greeks on Screen case study; but it also marks the first step of my second case study on stage plays produced on television in educational contexts. Continue reading
Greek Plays: King Oedipus (BBC, 1972)
Sophocles’ King Oedipus was televised in colour as part of BBC1’s Play of the Month series at 9.25pm on Friday 24 November 1972. In this post I discuss my first impressions of the production which I saw at the BFI last month, in advance of a more detailed analysis to follow. Continue reading
SCREEN PLAYS 