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Let's Murder Vivaldi by David Mercer

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BBC Radio 4, 31 May 2008
 

Nostalgia lay at the heart of David Mercer’s Let’s Murder Vivaldi, a new production (by Marika Gould) of a television play first broadcast in “The Wednesday Play” series in 1968. The subject-matter was reminiscent of Peter Nichols’s Passion Play (aired earlier this year on Radio 4), concerning two couples who engaged in a series of complicated sexual relationships – one old, the other young – and inevitably suffer as a result. The play was redolent of the late 60s in its portrayal of carefree attitudes towards love and sexual experiment; AIDS was certainly not a problem here. Its gender politics remained blissfully unaware of feminist concerns – the males remained firmly in control while their partners assumed submissive roles. Whether Let’s Murder Vivaldi was worth reviving – except as a period piece – is debatable; it certainly lacked that thrill of immediacy that was so characteristic of “Wednesday Play” material in the 60s and early 70s.

Passion Play by Peter Nichols