''Penda's Fen'' is a British

television play A television play is a television programming genre which is a drama performance broadcast from a multi-camera television studio, usually live in the early days of television but later recorded to tape. This is in contrast to a television movi ...

, written by

David Rudkin James David Rudkin (born 29 June 1936) is an English playwright . Early life Rudkin was born in London. Coming from a family of strict evangelical Christians, he was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and read Mods and Greats at St C ...

and directed by

Alan Clarke Alan John Clarke (28 October 1935 – 24 July 1990) was an English television and film director, producer and writer. Life and career Clarke was born in Wallasey, Wirral, England. Most of Clarke's output was for television rather than cinema, ...

. It was commissioned by

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

producer David Rose, and first broadcast on 21 March 1974 as part of the corporation's ''

Play for Today ''Play for Today'' is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage ...

anthology series An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a differ ...

Plot

Set in the village of

Pinvin Pinvin is a village in Worcestershire, England, a little to the north of Pershore, about south-east of Worcester, and about north-west of Evesham and lies on the crossroads of the A44, A4104 and B4082. It is also the location of Pershore railway ...

, near

Pershore Pershore is a market town in the Wychavon district in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon. The town is part of the West Worcestershire parliamentary constituency. At the 2011 census, the population was 7,125. The town i ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

, England, against the backdrop of the

Malvern Hills The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit affo ...

, the play is an evocation of conflicting forces within England past and present. These include authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient

pagan Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. ...

past. All of this comes together in the growing pains of the adolescent Stephen, a vicar's son, whose encounters include angels,

Edward Elgar Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...

and

King Penda Penda (died 15 November 655)Manuscript A of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' gives the year as 655. Bede also gives the year as 655 and specifies a date, 15 November. R. L. Poole (''Studies in Chronology and History'', 1934) put forward the theor ...

himself. The final scene of the play, where the

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

has an

apparitional experience In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. In academic discu ...

of King Penda and the "mother and father of England", is set on the Malvern Hills.

Cast

Spencer Banks Spencer Banks (born 1954 in Chesterfield) is a British television actor. He was mainly active in the 1970s, when he tended to play a geeky adolescent in glasses. He starred in two significant programmes: the popular children's science fiction s ...

as Stephen * Jennie Hesselwood * Ian Hogg * Georgine Anderson * John Atkinson * Geoffrey Staines as King Penda

Music

Music from Elgar's ''

The Dream of Gerontius ''The Dream of Gerontius'', Op. 38, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment b ...

'' features throughout the play. The 1971 Decca recording by

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...

with

Yvonne Minton Yvonne Fay Minton CBE (born 4 December 1938) is an Australian-born but mostly British-resident opera singer. She is variously billed as a soprano, mezzo-soprano or contralto. A native of Sydney, she originally studied voice while on a scholarshi ...

as the Angel is used, and the album itself features as a prop. Extracts from Elgar's ''Introduction and Allegro'' are also heard. Original music is by

Paddy Kingsland Paddy Kingsland (born 30 January 1947) is a composer of electronic music best known for his incidental music for science fiction series on BBC radio and television whilst working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Educated at Eggar's Grammar Sch ...

of the

BBC Radiophonic Workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering work in electroni ...

, who also electronically manipulated parts of the Britten recording.

Reception

Critics have noted that the play stands apart from Clarke's other, more realist output. Clarke himself admitted that he did not fully understand what the story was about. Nonetheless it has gone on to acquire the status of minor classic, to win awards and to be rebroadcast several times by the BBC. Following the original broadcast, Leonard Buckley wrote in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'': "Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth." In 2006, ''Vertigo'' magazine described ''Penda's Fen'' as "One of the great visionary works of English film". In 2011, ''Penda's Fen'' was chosen by '' Time Out'' London magazine as one of the 100 best British films. It described the play as a "multi-layered reading of contemporary society and its personal, social, sexual, psychic and metaphysical fault lines. Fusing Elgar's ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with a heightened socialism of vibrantly localist empathy, and pagan belief systems with pre-Norman histories and a seriously committed – and prescient – ecological awareness, ‘Penda's Fen’ is a unique and important statement." The play was released on limited-edition Blu-ray and DVD in May 2016. In an essay published with the release, Sukhdev Sandhu argues that ''Penda's Fen'' "is, long before the term was first used to describe the work of directors such as Todd Haynes and Isaac Julien, a queer film". According to Sandhu, the play presents Stephen's discovery of his homosexuality as "a gateway drug to a new enlightenment" that "inspires heterodoxy".Sukhdev, Sandhu (2016), "''Penda's Fen''", essay in Blu-ray booklet published by the British Film Institute, 23 May 2016.

Notes

;Citations ;Bibliography * *

External links