Giraudoux on radio

[Denis Johnston]

Apologies for any cross-postings -- I just wanted to spread the word
that my production of The Apollo of Bellac will be broadcast nationally
on CBC Radio:
Sunday Feb 20, 10 pm, CBC Radio-1 (in Toronto 99.1 FM)
Monday Feb 21, 9 pm, CBC Radio-2 (in Toronto 94.1 FM)

I can remember falling in love with this play in 1966, when I saw a very
fine high-school production at Oak Bay High. I had the opportunity to
direct the play myself at Vic High a decade later. (And Jessie, and
Meredith, and a bunch of others too of course.)

For the broadcast version, because of some difficult negotiations with
the estate of Maurice Valency, the creator of the standard translation,
we did the play in a new translation by Carole Galloway. Carole did an
absolutely fantastic job, and the freshness of the script made the
project a very memorable one to do. We think we got much closer to the
poetry of the piece than Valency did.

For example, Valency made Therese the wife of the President, whereas in
Giraudoux’s original she is clearly his longtime mistress instead. (It
was the early ‘50s, and perhaps a middle-American audience would not
have accepted this.) Consequently, Valency was forced to invent an
entirely new character -- the Chairman of the Board -- so that Agnes
could have the “prize” traditionally awarded to comic heroines: an
advantageous marriage. At our first rehearsal last summer, I had to tell
the actor who’d been cast as the Chairman that his role was no longer in
the play. He took it very well, and we gave him a clutch of silly Board
members to play instead.

As with all The Shaw's “Reading Series” productions beginning in 1996,
The Apollo of Bellac was performed before a live audience at the Royal
George Theatre, a performance recorded by CBC for later broadcast. It
worked splendidly live, and I hope that it works well on radio too.

Denis