BBC Radio 4, 19 January 2013
Tony (Tim McInnerny) is an eccentric landowner desperate to sell paintings
so as to ensure his future economic survival. Martin (Toby Jones) visits Tony's place; and although not an expert, he
values the paintings and tries to sell them, in the belief that one of them is a missing masterpiece. This initial act
sets in train a series of bizarre events, threatening Martin's relationship, livelihood - even his life.
Headlong looks critically at the way we view paintings, investing them with
significance that sometimes doesn't exist. In our desire for money, we think that fakes are Old Masters, and worthless
junk might be saleable (witness the proliferation of auction programmes on terrestrial and cable television, where besuited
art and antiques 'experts' offer their opinions for legions of would-be millionaires). The play is constructed as a
mock-art exhibition, narrated by Jones, in which every incident is constructed as if it were a sequences of pictures being
viewed one after another.
Having said that, I have to admit that Clive Brill's production is not quite as funny
as it tries to be. The cast work hard - Tim McInnerny has great fun as a crusty landowner with a crippling inferiority
complex, while Jones comes across as both knowing and bewildered at the same time. But I do confess to becoming a little
irritated by the play's picaresque structure, despite the surprise ending.
