Drama on 3: Maupassant’s Confessions of a Hedonist

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Maupassant’s Confessions of a Hedonist

BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, Maupassant’s Confessions of a Hedonist

A phantasmagorical journey through the most personal short stories of Guy de Maupassant.

Elliot Cowan is Guy de Maupassant and Holli Dempsey his unsuspecting accomplice in this phantasmagorical journey through the author’s most personal short stories.

A phantasmagorical journey through the most personal short stories of French writer and bon viveur, Guy de Maupassant, adapted and translated by Simon Scardifield.

Telling his short stories to an invited guest becomes a matter of life and death for the author as he struggles to save his sanity.  Will the power of his imagination be enough to pull him back from the brink. 

Featuring adaptations of A Strange Night Out, Mouche, Laid To Rest, Cockcrow and Le Horla this is about the untold consequences of living fast and hard enough to keep the demons at bay.

Guy ….. Elliot Cowan
Mathilde ….. Holli Dempsey
Saval ….. Colin Ryan
Fly ….. Alexandra Hannant
Joseph ….. Gunnar Cauthery
Celeste ….. Ruth Everett
The Baron ….. Jonathan Forbes

Other parts were played by Matthew Durkan, Lloyd Thomas and Simon Scardifield

Directed by Gemma Jenkins

Maupassant was writing during the latter half of the 19th century.  The world of the chosen stories is like entering a Toulouse Lautrec painting depicting the wild energy of Belle Epoque Paris.  His later stories, of which Le Horla is one, are akin to experiencing the acid colours and trippy surrealism evident in the work of Odilon Redon.

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