Sight Unseen: Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard, and Other Contemporary Dramatists on Radio (review)

Radio drama is alive and well, especially in Britain where it goes back to the early days of the medium. In Sight Unseen, Elissa Guralnick shows how important radio drama is from both critical and creative points of view. Her book complements scholarly predecessors, such as John Drakakis’s British Radio Drama (Cambridge, 1981), Val Gielgud’s British Radio Drama, 1922–1956: A Survey (Harrap, 1957), Peter Lewis’s Radio Drama (Longman, 1981), and Ian Rodger’s Radio Drama (Macmillan, 1982), with close readings of specific works that are widely admired yet little known. Guralnick’s purpose is to demonstrate that radio drama is not outdated, obsolete, or déclassé, but rather, one of “expressive potential” (xi). In six chapters and a short afterword, Guralnick “foreground[s] particular motifs, in order to sample the genre’s full range” (xii).

In chapter 1, “The Visual Challenge,” Guralnick examines Baker’s Scenes from an Execution. This is a fitting place to begin her study because of the preconception that “despite its blank screen . . . [radio] is powerfully visual” (xii), and Baker’s play is an example of a work that treats the eye of the mind as at least equal to the eyes of the head. Chapter 2, “The Imperfect Eye,” contains an explication of Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase in which the dramatist mocks the mind’s eye by engaging it in the paradox that the truth cannot be seen.

“The Musical Dimension” is the focus of chapter 3, which gives special attention to Robert Ferguson’s Transfigured Night (as suggested in the subtitle “In Itself, In the Orbit of Schoenberg, and In the Shadow of Beckett’s Radio Drama . . . with a Coda on [John] Cage’s Roaratorio”). Guralnick calls Ferguson’s monologue an “aria in prose” (xiii). The distinction between music and language, as this radio drama demonstrates, is that music is about itself alone, whereas words refer to objects and ideas about which they tell stories. To determine whether the gulf between music and language can be bridged, Guralnick then compares Ferguson’s work with Beckett’s efforts to silence narration.

A comparison/contrast approach to Kopit’s Wings and Pinter’s A Slight Ache serves as the structure for the next chapter, “The Mind.” The mind and its inner landscape predominate in these two dramas as their characters try to make the world become what they want it to be. Rudkin’s Cries from Casement as His Bones Are Brought to Dublin is the subject of chapter 5, “The World.” This biographical drama illustrates how the mind can be seen as a path to the world outside, rather than as a means only of turning inward.

Chapter 6, “The Stage” brings together the stage drama and radio drama that underlies Guralnick’s material, focusing on John Arden’s Pearl and The Bagman. Arden corroborates the medium’s cultural significance and confirms its claim to be an alternate stage. She concludes by elaborating on the concept contained in Wallace Stevens’s line about a “metaphysician in the dark” (“Of Modern Poetry”). This image, she claims, “embodies the very quintessence of radio drama, a genre that approximates pure metaphysics by creating whole universes out of ideas” (192). Therefore, radio “gives the impression of having originated spontaneously inside our heads” (192).

Despite my appreciation for Guralnick’s book, I disagree with her interpretation of some of the plays. For instance, she states that Pinter’s A Slight Ache would not work on stage because the audience could easily deduce the Matchseller’s physical condition by observing his physical presence. Yet it is not his physical condition which is important; rather, it is Edward’s and Flora’s perceptions of him that matter. At times, Guralnick’s understanding of the theatre may seem a bit narrow. Nevertheless, to those who are already fans of radio drama, this volume will be welcome; and for those who do not...