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Drama on 3

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Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series of drama performances, ranging from experimental works to the Classics

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

Drama on 3: Vaclav Havel - Largo Desolato

Drama: Political

15/04/2012

Vaclav Havel - Largo Desolato

BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, Vaclav Havel - Largo Desolato

Can the dissident Leopold Nettles survive the attentions of the state? With Richard Briers

4 Extra Debut. Can the dissident Leopold Nettles survive the attentions of the state and the expectation of his friends? Stars Richard Briers.

Theatre critic Michael Billington introduces a classic play from the archives by Czech playwright and President, Vaclav Havel, to mark Havel's death in December last year. 

When the death of the former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel was announced last year, Europe lost one of its great dissident voices. From the 1960s to the 1980s, BBC radio broadcast many new productions of Havel's plays - plays that were usually banned in his then-Communist homeland because of the way they mocked and interrogated the absurd nature of totalitarian rule. 

Michael Billington, theatre-critic for the Guardian for much of this period, introduces another chance to hear a 1987 Havel black comedy called Largo Desolato in an English version by Tom Stoppard, himself born in Czechoslovakia. 

Richard Briers stars as Leopold, a philosopher who has offended the authorities in an unnamed country. He has written a certain philosophical essay and anxiously each day awaits the knock on the door. His friends, of course, expect him to act like a hero....

Professor Leopold Nettles.......................Richard Briers 
Edward.................................................Paul Gregory 
Suzanna............................................Jennifer Piercey 
First Sidney.........................................Philip Jackson 
Second Sidney........................................David Goodland 
Lucy...................................................Belinda Lang 
Bertram................................................John Moffatt 
First Chap..........................................Anthony Jackson 
Second Chap............................................Ian Thompson 
Marguerite..............................................Sue Broomfield

Produced by Matthew Walters.

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