The Daily Telegraph Thursday 1 August 2019 *** 23Isn’t it time to cut back on the box-sets?
The British TV play
was once the envy of
the world. In this age
of binge-watching,
Ed Power thinks a
revival is due
content has largely deprived viewers
of the pleasure of this sort of one-off
storytelling.
There are obviously exceptions.
Excellent single dramas in recent years
have included BBC Three’s Killed By
My Debt and BBC One’s Damilola,
Our Loved Boy, Levi David Addai’s
dramatisation of the death in 2000 of
10-year-old Damilola Taylor.
What these all too rare examples
confirm is that self-contained drama
can scrutinise and inform in ways
beyond the reach of serialised
storytelling. The quick reveal, the
shocking twist, the secret hiding in
plain sight... all are arguably better
suited to the limited format.
This year’s TV adaptation of Lucy
Kirkwood’s award-winning playArts
The queen of world music puts
on a glorious, feel-good show
T
rying to keep track of
Angélique Kidjo’s career can
be a dizzying experience; it’s
also a frequently exhilarating
one. Since her international
breakthrough in the early Nineties,
the Benin-born singer-songwriter,
broadcaster, actress and activist has
performed in numerous languages
(Fon, Yoruba, French, English and
Spanish among them), scooped
several Grammys, and embraced
styles spanning West African roots to
reggae, rock’n’roll and more. There
is a dazzling precision to Kidjo’s
vocal power – so much so that her
albums have sometimes sounded
over-polished – but her concerts are
continued proof of her exceptional,
and unpredictable, creative range
Kidjo may be cast as a “world music”
A-lister, a grande dame of global
sounds, but she is also a dynamic
mover and shaker of boundaries.
Tuesday’s late-night Prom was
billed as a tribute to one of Kidjo’s
formative inspirations: the late
legendary Cuban salsa vocalist Celia
Cruz, whose career began in the
Fifties, took in fruitful Sixties and
Seventies Latin fusions with the
likes of Tito Puente and the Fania All
Stars, and turned Cruz, who died in2003, into an institution. Cruz’s own
repertoire drew deep influence from
the Yoruba songs that migrated with
enslaved people to the Americas.
Kidjo and Cruz might be
international stars from different
eras, but there are resonant parallels:
both artists boast gloriously rich and
expressive voices; both have been
celebrated as queens of their scenes- and both spent years in exile from
their birthplaces. From the opening
number Baila Yemaya, Kidjo evoked
the West African roots of Cruz’s
catalogue, backed by a slickly spirited
international band. A sudden, lithely
funky workout of Talking Heads’s
1980 new wave number Crosseyed and
Painless might have proved an odd
diversion, but the headstrong flow of
Kidjo and co made it a delight; as she
told the audience, we were here not
only to celebrate the mighty Cruz, but
“the diversity of our humanity”.
Indeed, she has previously covered
David Byrne’s US art rockers – who
themselves were hugely inspired
by pan-African rhythms. Another
Talking Heads smash hit, Once in
a Lifetime, was added to the heady
mix – and at one point, Kidjo flung
her chic headwrap to the back of the
stage, so that she could dance with
even more vigour: gracefully flitting
between regal swirls, Jùjú jiving, and
punk-edged pogo-ing.
A surprise appearance from Cuban
piano star Roberto Fonseca also
brought intense elegance to several
numbers, including the Afro-Peruvian
classic Toro Mata (Bull Kills). The
incredibly bittersweet roots of these
songs pulsed within a storming
feel-good performance. Anyone shy
about dancing was swept up by Kidjo,
sashaying through the crowd as she
sang her own hit Afirika. The finale
added her homage to another icon,
South Africa’s Miriam Makeba, with
an immaculately brassy rendition of
the much-loved anthem Pata Pata,
sparking a multi-generational rave-up
at the Royal Albert Hall. Musical
worlds not only collided here; they
felt joyously connected.Prom 16Angélique Kidjo
Royal Albert Hall★★★★★
By Arwa HaiderDazzling vocals: Angélique Kidjo was in
irresistible form during her PromW
e have reached peak
box-set in British TV
drama. The quest
to bring viewers
the next Killing
Eve or The Night
Manager has become an obsession.
Every second new drama, it sometimes
feels, is a co-production with mega-
bucks American players such as HBO
or Amazon. The goal: to feed viewers’
near-insatiable appetite for “content”,
then flog the programmes to other
broadcasters overseas.
The latest voice in the wilderness
to protest this fixation is writer and
broadcaster Libby Purves. “Either
because of Netflix or mere timidity,
commissioners want box-sets,” she
lamented in Radio Times this week.
This focus on multi-part storytelling
comes at a price. Self-contained,
one-off drama, modestly staged and
with a discernible beginning, middle
and end, has almost vanished from
the national airwaves. The play is very
much not the thing.
That has created a regrettable void
in the schedules. A sense of what is
missing can be gleaned by looking back
to the golden age of onscreen theatre,
as exemplified by the BBC’s Play for
Today, which ran from 1970 to 1984.
Play for Today brought stagecraft
out of the theatre and into the nation’s
living rooms. There was considerable
variation, with individual episodes
ranging in length from 50 to 100
minutes. And the strand attracted some
of Britain’s great dramatists – Dennis
Potter, Mike Leigh, Alan Bleasdale.
It could be provocative. Lindsay
Anderson’s 1972 production of David
Storey’s Home, with John Gielgud
and Ralph Richardson, was set in a
mental asylum, though this fact only
emerged as the story progressed. The
hugely challenging message was that
the delusions of the psychologically
unwell were not so different to those of
the broader population. It was the sort
of reversal sure to have you sitting up
straight, gagging on your Ovaltine.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Sandfords’s
Edna, the Inebriate Woman (1971)
tackled the emerging problem of
homelessness. A year later, Alan
Clarke’s A Life Is Forever examined the
toll of spending time behind bars.
There were often chills and thrills to
go with the social realism. Vampires,
directed in 1979 by documentary-
maker John Goldschmidt, told the
story of two runaway schoolboys
confronting a supernatural foe in
suburban Liverpool. The juxtaposition
of the kitchen sink everyday with
the supernatural was unnerving, and
Vampires enjoys a cult following toBBCMARK ALLAN FOR THE TELEGRAPHthis day. Play for Today was also where
many viewers encountered classics of
British theatre for the first time.
Mike Leigh’s towering dissection of
middle-class scruples, Abigail’s Party,
was broadcast in the slot in 1977, some
six months after its stage debut.
The unnerving genius of Dennis
Potter was likewise beamed into
living rooms via his 1979 work Blue
Remembered Hills, in which adults
portrayed children. However another
Potter piece intended for Play forToday, Brimstone and Treacle, was
deemed too much and remained
untransmitted until 1987. The BBC
blanched at a scene in which a disabled
woman is raped by a man who, it is
hinted, is the Devil.
Nor did Play for Today exist
in isolation. There was an entire
ecosystem of TV drama. The BBC also
brought us Play for the Month, Play for
the Week and a succession of one-offs.
ITV, not exactly synonymous withThis Prom is available for 30 days via the
BBC Sounds app. The Proms continue
until Sept 14. Tickets: 020 7070 4441;
bbc.co.uk/promsChimerica is a case in point. Smart and
gripping on stage, it was dragged out in
a four-parter for Channel 4 and ended
up being saggy and inert, Kirkwood’s
good ideas scraped too thin. Given that
Kirkwood herself wrote the adaptation,
the fault surely lay with the medium
rather than the message. Then there
is Jez Butterworth, the genius behind
the play Jerusalem, who lost all his
ability to thrill when hired by Sky to
write the nine-part series Britannia.
Most of the first season consisted
of Kelly Reilly in smudgy eyeliner
clopping around on a horse, or so
it appeared.
The great irony is that the spirit of
Play for Today lives on in the one place
where it might reasonably be regarded
as anathema. Netflix’s Black Mirror
(which originated on Channel 4) is
essentially a sci-fi dystopia riff on the
same theatrical model. Just like the
original Play for Today, individual
episodes vary in length. And the series
bounds between subject matters
(albeit with the overriding theme that
technology is bad, possibly evil).
Where Black Mirror falls down is in
showcasing a diversity of voices. With
a handful of exceptions, the entire
future-shock fandango flows from the
imagination of Charlie Brooker. And
while his is no doubt a suitably dark
and twisted creative furnace, with time
a certain “sameyness” has crept in.
Nevertheless, the popularity of Black
Mirror suggests a genuine appetite
among viewers for one-off drama.
Consider your own viewing habits.
How often have you fired up Netflix
only to despair of all the catching
up you have to do on your favourite
shows? At the end of a long day, it
can feel like homework. Contrast that
with the thrill of experiencing a new
work – and the knowledge that, even if
it doesn’t quite chime, you’ll be in and
out in under an hour.
Theatre on television has a proud
history. But in an age when we can
feel besieged by television’s quest for
endless content, it should surely be
part of its future, too.Hit singles: Abigail’s
Party, above, and
Blue Remembered
Hills, left, were
made in the golden
age of the TV play.
Black Mirror, above
right, shows there
is still an audience
for such worksThe BBC’s Play for Today
strand brought stagecraft
out of the theatre and into
the nation’s living roomsReaders can watch
Glyndebourne Festival
Opera’s brand new
production of Die
zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
starring Björn Bürger (right)for free on the Telegraph
website. The performance
can be watched live
on Sunday August 4
at 5.35pm and is then
available on demand untilMonday August 12
at 9.30am.
Visit: telegraph.co.uk/
opera/what-to-see/
magic-flute-livestream-
glyndebourneWatch The Magic Flute for free online
bbc.co.uk/promsuk/
/
eam-think-piece drama, spent decades
making one-off plays, most notably the
Armchair Theatre strand. This was a
year-round undertaking.
All that, and it also served as a
springboard for major TV series. John
Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey
started out as a Play for Today in 1975, as
did Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff
(which debuted on Play for Today as
Blackstuff in 1980).
Television’s present quest for infiniteРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS