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| On the Waterfront Synopsis |
performance reviewed by The Daily Telegraph
Saturday afternoon's play on Radio 4 was Budd Schulberg's On the Waterfront, newly revised by the author for radio, independently produced by Jarvis and Ayres, directed in America by Rosalind Ayres. The story is of criminal control of the New York docks, murderously enforced. Charley (Richard Cox) is a middle-ranking mobster, brother of Terry (Jeffrey Donovan) a former boxer, once induced by Charley to throw a significant fight for the betting benefit of top gangster Johnny (Hector Elizondo) now retained on the crooks' books as a muscleman. Edie (Rebecca Pigeon) wants to find out why her brother has been killed and knows that Terry has the answer. The local priest's conscience comes alive in the subsequent fight of right against wrong in which, though right has its redemptive moments, wrong will ultimately and tragically prevail.
It is almost half a century since Elia Kazan's Oscar-winning film of it, with Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Lee J Cobb, Eva Marie Saint and Karl Malden. It is hard to hear the lines without seeing their faces. But that wasn't what held back this ambitious and in many ways laudable production. Nor was the fact that since Schulberg's blazing indictment of corruption and working-class oppression we have seen many another such parable. The Sopranos, possibly the most distinguished drama to have come out of America in the last decade, is only the latest.
The problem here was the script. It smelled of its time, not long enough ago to be historic, not universal enough to stand up in ours, too big for the intimacy of radio, too melodramatic to pass. The performances here gave it dignity and power. They could not give it life because (and, as a radio listener, it pains me to say so) sometimes words aren't enough. Sometimes you need to see people to feel what they mean.
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