Goodness, but it's been a long time coming...
A truly Once and Future project...
As he turned the pages, he fell instantly in love with this quirkily magical version of the age-old legend of King Arthur as he had never heard it told before.
Having got to the last page of a book he didn't want to end, he was thrilled to find that there was still more to the story –– three more books of it in fact, in one giant volume called The Once and Future King...
Fast forward half a century into the FUTURE...
The same young lad – now a venerable old man – has taken that book and turned it into a six-part radio series for the BBC...
The new radio dramatisation – debuting on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 9 November at 3:00 pm (and repeated on Saturday 15 November at 9:00 pm – follows Arthur's story from his boyhood as an adopted orphan to his miraculous revelation as 'Rightwise King of All England' to the creation of the Round Table and its eventual collapse in ruins as a result of forbidden love, hatred, deceit and revenge.
To provide a framework for the telling of the tale, I turned to a fifth volume: the posthumously published The Book of Merlyn in which – on the eve of King Arthur's final battle with his bastard son, Mordred – his childhood tutor, the enchanter Merlyn, returns to give the beleaguered monarch a final understanding of the past and a glimpse of the future...
Starring as Merlyn in The Once and Future King is David Warner...
...an actor who was not only the Hamlet of his generation but also Henry VI in The War of the Roses cycle before going on to a film and television career in which he has given dozens of unforgettable performances: as the eponymous Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment and, among many films, Time After Time, The Omen, Tron, Time Bandits, A Christmas Carol, Cross of Iron and, more recently, with Kenneth Branagh in the TV series, Wallender.
David also played Lord Sepulchrave in my 1985 Sony Award-winning radio plays, Titus Groan and Gormenghast and – returning to the fantasy realms of Mervyn Peake – as the Artist in The History of Titus Groan that won me a BBC Audio Drama Award and which is available to purchase as a download here.
Also heading the cast are Paul Ready as King Arthur, Lyndsey Marshal as Queen Guenever and Alex Waldman as Lancelot...
You can discover more about the series including photos and interviews with myself and members of the cast on BBC Radio's The Once and Future King website page.
Why not take a trip to Camelot – it's really quite magical!
5 comments:
Dash it, why does it have to be broadcast at the very hour we start worship at the Mennonites? And I've loved David Warner ever since, aged about 13 or 14, I saw him in 'Morgan: A suitable case for treatment'. Oh well, there's always Listen Again...
Camelot ! Its only a model.....
I'm looking forward to listening to this, Brian! At the moment I'm putting together a blog post to alert my readers to the series (the post won't go up until the 14th, but they'll still have a small window of time to catch Episode 1 !!)
Well that was a bold first episode ! As predicted I was hooked and then....it finished and I have to wait till next weekend. Huh !
Weird that, isn't it?
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