"Penda's Fen" is the 16th episode of fourth season of the British

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

anthology TV series ''

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 ...

''. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 21 March 1974. "Penda's Fen" was written by

David Rudkin James David Rudkin (born 29 June 1936) is an England, 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 Great ...

, directed by Alan Clarke, produced by David Rose, and starred

Spencer Banks Spencer Banks (born 1954 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, 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 chi ...

Plot

Set in the village of

Pinvin Pinvin is a village in Worcestershire, England, a little to the north of Pershore Pershore () is a market town and civil parish in the Wychavon district in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon, Warwickshire, River Avon. At ...

, near

Pershore Pershore () is a market town and civil parish in the Wychavon district in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon, Warwickshire, River Avon. At the 2011 UK census, census, the population was 7,125. The town is best known for Per ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...

, 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 af ...

, 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 (, 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 Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the ...

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. 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 ...

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 discus ...

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

Cast

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'', Opus number, Op. 38, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from The Dream of Gerontius (poem), the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man' ...

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

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

with Yvonne Minton 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 Schoo ...

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 music, incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering ...

, 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 admitted that he did not fully understand what the story was about. The play 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 Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'': "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.

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

*
Synopsis at BFI screenonline

Review at TV Cream

Interview with David Rose and Peter Ansorge
{{Play for Today 1974 British television episodes 1974 television plays BBC television dramas British television plays British supernatural television shows Play for Today Worcestershire in fiction Folk horror