High up, on Clufton Bay Railway Bridge, young Albert treads the girders, calmly painting the rust-red steel. But his distant perspective soon begins to alter his view of life on the ground.
And then Fraser appears ...
Cast:
Albert......... John Hurt
Bob......... Nigel Anthony
Charlie......... Alexander John
Chairman......... Victor Lucas
Dad - Geoffrey Wincott
Dave - Ian Thompson
George - Anthony Jackson
Fitch - Ronald Herdman
Mother......... Betty Hardy
Father......... Alan Dudley
Kate......... Barbara Mitchell
Fraser......... Haydn Jones
Directed by Charles Lefeaux
(From the BBC archives courtesy of Lynne Truss’ “Pick of the Archive)
It was first broadcast on BBC Radio on 13 July 1967. In 1968, it won an award in the Czechoslovak International Radio Play Festival, held in Prague. In Rome, it won the Prix Italia,
The play was remade in 1988.
Size 53MB. Length 58 Minutes. Bitrate 128kbps
Replies
A bit more information, from the 1988 broadcast:
Sir Tom Stoppard's play Albert's Bridge, develops similar themes to those of his earlier plays, concentrating specifically on the opposition between chaos and order. Like John Brown of A Separate Peace (1960), Albert cannot stand the chaos of everyday life, and seeks an escape into a more ordered existence. In A Separate Peace the problem was presented largely in terms of physical circumstances, the hospital being a world more ordered than the outside world. In Albert's Bridge, the physical circumstances are equated with conceptual, or psychological factors, which belong to the subjective world of individual perception. Hence the peace of mind Albert finds high up among the geometrically ordered bridge girders, away from the human demands of his wife and child, is equated with the concept of seeing life from a distance, as opposed to seeing it close up.
Albert: 'The banks are littered with various bricks, kiddiblocks with windows; dinky toys move through the gaps, dodged by moving dots that have no colour ... It's the most expensive toytown in the store - the detail is remarkable.'
Kate: I saw you today ... coming out of the hairdressers. Six and six, I had it cut.
Albert: Just goes to show - if you get far enough away, six and sixpence doesn't show, and nor does anything, at a distance.
Kate: Well, life is all close up isn't it?
Albert: Yes, it hits you when you come back down.
This concept of varying perspective is reinforced by Frazer, a potential suicide who climbs the bridge in order to jump off. But from the heights of the bridge he escapes the pressure which caused his despair and therefore no longer wants to jump. Back on the ground the pressure builds up again and he climbs the bridge again, so he spends his time repeatedly ascending and descending the bridge. He explains:-
'I can't help it. I'm forced up and coaxed down. I'm a victim of perspective.'
Albert becomes entirely dependent on his job and eventually abandons his wife and child in favour of the bridge. His family life is ruined by his hankering for order. His situation does not last though, the bridge finally collapses when 1,800 painters march on to it without breaking step; an excess of order on a physical level. The authorities have called in the army of painters because in planning the most economical way to paint the bridge they have, like George Riley of Enter a Free Man, relied entirely on logic and forgotten common sense; an excess of order on a mental level. Thus the play illustrates, on a number of levels, the thesis that an excess of order causes collapse due to the upsetting of some kind of natural balance.
Thanks