Troy is a trilogy ofradio plays, first broadcast onBBC Radio 3 from 28 November to 30 November 1998. The cast is led byPaul Scofield, who came out of retirement to take part.[1] Troy was written byAndrew Rissik and produced byJeremy Mortimer. The trilogy is a companion piece toKing Priam, Rissik's earlier more optimistic take on the story in which Scofield took the title role.[2]
The three parts ofTroy are
Troy was repeated the year following its first transmission and has been broadcast onBBC Radio 7 every year from 2004 to 2009 and on its successor channelBBC Radio 4 Extra in 2012. It has also been broadcast in other countries, for example byABC Classic FM in 1999 and 2000.[citation needed]
Troy consists of three 90-minute plays.
The first episode starts with the events aroundParis's birth, the prophecies that he would bring about the destruction of Troy and KingPriam's decision to have him exposed onMount Ida. It continues with his decision to leave his foster-father Anacreon and loverOenone to go to Troy to plead for the return of a bull that is being taken there for sacrifice and Priam's subsequent recognition and acceptance of him as his son. It concludes with Paris's elopement withHelen fromSparta and Priam's decision to support the two lovers rather than return Helen to her husbandMenalaus and his consequent acceptance of the war with the Greeks.
The second episode concentrates on the final year of the war. It covers the quarrel betweenAchilles andAgamemnon, the deaths ofPatroclus,Hector, Achilles and Paris and concludes with theTrojan Horse and the fall of Troy.
The final episode concerns events after the war. It coversKlytemnestra's revenge on Agamemnon and their childrenOrestes andElectra's revenge on her and subsequent sentencing. It also portrays the lives of Menalaus and Helen after they are separated by a shipwreck and she is raped, mutilated and sold into slavery by pirates. It ends with their reunion.
Gina Landor has adapted a selection from the trilogy asMen Do Not Go to War Over Women. It features speeches by Helen and Klytemnestra. Landor has performed it at theBattersea Arts Centre in 2000[3] and at theBritish Museum in 2004. She has also taken it to the Balkans.[citation needed]
WhenTroy was first transmitted it received much praise.The Independent's critic Robert Hanks summed up its approach to its subject as follows: "If Troy has a theme, it is accepting what life throws at you, the grace that is left when ambition and possessions and everything else you thought made life enjoyable have been stripped away". He praised the play's "boldly conceived, always searching approach to the story and its infinite meanings" and the strength of the casting, though he had qualms about the score and how the language shifted between the archaic and the modern.[2] Colleague Sue Gaisford had no such reservations stating "Jeremy Mortimer's production of Andrew Rissik's trilogy is probably the greatest radio drama [anyone] could ever hear".[4] She praises the language as "spare, poetic, beautiful", noting the use sometimes ofiambic pentameter and extendedimagery. Ken Garner ofThe Express on Sunday noted that "most of the acting was intimate, understated, with long monologues. Only in the conflict between Achilles (Toby Stephens) and Hektor (Michael Maloney) did language and delivery match the violent action." In contrast to Hanks, he saw the score as a positive element "It still made sense stripped of verbal passion. Nick Russell-Pavier and David Chilton's martial music supplied the tension bled out of the script." In summation, "This was a Trojan War for our time, a tale of intimate, everyday human weakness; they sought 'the life of quietness', while knowing their desire was destroying it."[5]