by W.B. Yeats
with music specially composed by John Buckland
The orchestra conducted by Patrick Savill
Radio adaptation and production by Frederick Bradnum
Cast in order of speaking:

The place is first at an open space between three streets just before dawn; then in the castle throne-room the same morning.

The Player Queen is play with a terrible theme: it says that evil can triumph in the contemporary world, and it shows this happening. But the prophetic message is only apparent upon reflection, which is probably as it should be. The symbolism never intrudes into the action. The play is essentially entertainment, at times extremely funny in a clownish, knock-about way. Septimus, the drunken poet, is almost a comic figure, a man whose enjoyment of his own behaviour obscures the tragedy of that behaviour. (F.B.)