THERE ARE SEVERAL legendary radio dramas I've been able to post here such as the one I did a few weeks back, Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood* and others I've wished I could, such as an English translation of Wolfgang Borchert's Draußen vor der Tür, usually translated as "The Man Outside."
One of the legendary ones I've long wanted to find online was broadcast on the BBC on February 4th, 1973, Cries from Casement as his Bones are Brought to Dublin by David Rudkin. The project began years earlier but it wasn't produced till then. It dealt with the real life repatriation, sort of, of the remains of the hero of Irish independence who had been convicted of treason in 1916 who was hanged and his body buried in a lime pit, despite the agitation to spare his life then the continuing pressure to have his remains brought to Ireland for burial.
Roger Casement had been held as not on a British but a world hero for his exhaustive investigation and exposure of the enormous numbers of crimes against humanity of the Leopold II and his agents in Congo, murders, genocides, maiming, rapes, etc. His work was almost certainly the inspiration of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Conrad turned against him when he was arrested for treason in trying to organize an army of independence for Ireland), his report on the horrors of the rubber industry there made him world famous as a great humanitarian, though Leopold and Pius X condemned his work as anti-Catholic lies on behalf of British imperialism, which would become quite ironic considering his conversion to Catholicism before his execution.
Casement repeated the same exposure of similar and perhaps even greater crimes against Native Americans in the rubber industry in Peru in which the British financial interests were deep and controlling One of the sources I read said at the time of Casement's exposure of that industry the company he exposed was the biggest one on the London Stock Exchange. He was a world figure, an influential figure in Washington and around the world. He was given a knighthood in 1911 for that work as he'd been previously honored for his work in Congo.
He was obviously not very impressed with such honors, he once threatened someone who called him "Sir" though I think that was before he decided to renounce his honors and work for Irish independence trying to work with the German government during WWI to raise a liberation army from Irish prisoners of war, what led to his arrest when he went back to Ireland for the Easter Uprising. One of the sleazier features of his trial were the British government leaking diaries it said were Casement's (though their authenticity has been widely disputed) which indicate Roger Casement had a number of sexual relationships with other men. Which figured strongly in dampening public pressure against his execution. I think today the meaning of those diaries has turned 180 degrees and he is now considered a hero of LGBTQ+ history, though who knows how he'd have thought about that? I suspect, given his life's work on behalf of those under subjugation that he may have been OK with it but there's no way to know.
I'll leave it to you to read more about him and just give you this link to a paper, one of many, about the play in question, From Fragments to a Whole: Homosexuality and Partition in Cries from Casement as his Bones are Brought to Dublin, by David Rudkin. The play, itself, which was broadcast the year after the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre during the height of the grouples, is sometimes considered a commentary on the partition of Ireland, the symbol of Casement's purported bones (the rumor that they got some of the infamous wife=poisoner Crippen's bones in the coffin figures highly in the play) and the fact that the British government would't allow them to be buried where his family and he wanted them buried in Northern Ireland certainly makes one of many points in what is an extremely deep and complex play. It has everything from very dark humor to tragedy and even some rather farcical episodes.
That said it may be seen as fitting, though extremely frustrating to me, that only a half-hour of it is available to be heard. The text has been published - you can read it on a 'to borrow" basis at Archive.org. Since I think it's unlikely that there will be another audio production of it anytime soon and the attempt to bring it to the stage was a disaster, this may be the best you can get for a long time. David Rudkin pointed out that much of the dialogue of the play happens in a box so it is appropriate that it be heard from a box. Needless to say if I can find a full recording of it I will post it here.
Cries of Casement As His Bones Are Brought To Dublin.
The BBC broadcast of the play aired on February 4, 1973, and was produced by John Tydeman and starred Norman Rodway as Roger Casement.
Other members of the cast include:
Joan Bakewell
Sean Barrett
Kate Binchy
Michael Deacon
William Eedle
Kevin Flood
Martin Friend
Heather Gibson
David Gooderson
Sheila Grant
Michael N. Harbour
John Hollis
Fraser Kerr
Rolf Lefebvre
Peggy Marshall
Meryl O'Keefe
Irene Prador
David Rudkin
Henry Stamper
Eva Stuart
John Tusa
David Valla
Mary Wimbush
Joy Worth
* I would really like to repost one of the best ones I once posted, Gordon Pengilly's Seeing In The Dark again. Unfortuately, it was taken down from where I found it. It's another of those plays I don't think can work anywhere nearly as well as on the radio.
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