"Penda's Fen" is the 16th episode of fourth season of the British BBC anthology TV series Play for Today. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 21 March 1974. "Penda's Fen" was written by David Rudkin, directed by Alan Clarke, produced by David Rose, and starred Spencer Banks.[1]
| "Penda's Fen" | |
|---|---|
| Play for Today episode | |
 Home video cover | |
| Episode no. | Series 4 Episode 16 |
| Directed by | Alan Clarke |
| Written by | David Rudkin |
| Original air date | 21 March 1974 |
Plot
editSet in the village of Pinvin, near Pershore in Worcestershire, England, against the backdrop of the Malvern Hills, the play is an evocation of conflicting forces within England past and present. These include authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient pagan past. All of this comes together in the growing pains of the adolescent Stephen, a vicar's son, whose encounters include angels, Edward Elgar and King Penda. The final scene of the play, where the protagonist has an apparitional experience of King Penda and the "mother and father of England", is set on the Malvern Hills.[2][3]
Cast
edit- Spencer Banks as Stephen
- Jennie Hesselwood
- Ian Hogg
- Georgine Anderson
- John Atkinson
- Geoffrey Staines as King Penda
Music
editMusic from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius features throughout the play. The 1971 Decca recording by Benjamin Britten with Yvonne Minton as the Angel is used, and the album itself features as a prop. Extracts from Elgar's Introduction and Allegro are also heard.
Original music is by Paddy Kingsland of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who also electronically manipulated parts of the Britten recording.
Reception
editCritics have noted that the play stands apart from Clarke's other, more realist output. Clarke admitted that he did not fully understand what the story was about.[4] The play has gone on to acquire the status of minor classic, to win awards and to be rebroadcast several times by the BBC.[citation needed] Following the original broadcast, Leonard Buckley wrote in The Times: "Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth".[5]
In 2006, Vertigo magazine described "Penda's Fen" as "One of the great visionary works of English film".[6] In 2011, "Penda's Fen" was chosen by Time Out London magazine as one of the 100 best British films. It described the play as a "multi-layered reading of contemporary society and its personal, social, sexual, psychic and metaphysical fault lines. Fusing Elgar's ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with a heightened socialism of vibrantly localist empathy, and pagan belief systems with pre-Norman histories and a seriously committed – and prescient – ecological awareness, ‘Penda's Fen’ is a unique and important statement."[7]
The play was released on limited-edition Blu-ray and DVD in May 2016.[8] In an essay published with the release, Sukhdev Sandhu argues that "Penda's Fen" "is, long before the term was first used to describe the work of directors such as Todd Haynes and Isaac Julien, a queer film". According to Sandhu, the play presents Stephen's discovery of his homosexuality as "a gateway drug to a new enlightenment" that "inspires heterodoxy".[9]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Banks-Smith, Nancy (22 March 1974). "Penda's Fen". The Guardian.
- ^ David Rudkin: Sacred Disobedience: An Expository Study of His Drama 1959–96 by David Ian Rabey, Oxford, Routledge, 1998 ISBN 90-5702-126-9
- ^ Rolinson, D. Alan Clarke Manchester University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-7190-6830-4
- ^ "BFI Screenonline: Penda's Fen (1974)". Screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
- ^ Robin Carmody. "Penda's Fen". Elidor.freeserve.co.uk. Archived from the original on 4 September 2012. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
- ^ "VERTIGO | Penda's Fen". Vertigomagazine.co.uk. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
- ^ Simmonds, Paul. "100 best British films: The list - Time Out London". Timeout.com. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
- ^ "Penda's Fen". Amazon UK. 23 May 2016.
- ^ Sukhdev, Sandhu (2016), "Penda's Fen", essay in Blu-ray booklet published by the British Film Institute, 23 May 2016.
Bibliography
edit- Raby, David (1998). David Rudkin: Sacred Disobedience: an expository study of his drama 1959-96. Oxford, Routledge. ISBN 90-5702-126-9.
- Rolinson, D (2005). Alan Clarke. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6830-4.