A series of 10 radio plays under the title. 'Placeprints' are availabe on podcasts, and each one, all written by David Rudkin, tells the untold secret history of a perhaps unremarkable landmark or place in The British Isles. A placeprint being a vision or happening in our own time which has come from the past.
The third play in this series is 'Grim's Ditch', and from listening to the play I imagine it at one time being a similar idea to Offa's Dyke; a bulwark of earthmounds and a long narrow trough between them marking the boundary between warring tribes. Looking at the internet to find pictures of it, it seems that in fact there are more than one Grim's Ditch, and several others with similar names which range all across the south east of England. We are informed that the ditch in this placeprint is in Berkshire, and is a Saxon bulwark. The Ditch is also anthropomorphised in this play, as it is indeed the Ditch that narrates the story.
The Ditch (Juliet Stevenson) is deriding the visit of a professor whose expectations of the Ditch and the reality he encounters are somewhat different. He is there to back up his research on the structure for a lecture he is giving about it in the morning. In his mind he imagined a large tangible defensive structure, and he was greeted with a couple of grassy knolls. The Ditch watches and sneers at his attempts to recreate the Ditch in his mind's eye, and he travels from one part of the extanct structure to another to another. Eventually the professor comes across a part of the ditch which he sees far more clearly... A large megolithic structure, a temple, almost like those he has seen pictures of the Aztecs. He sees a man, a vision perhaps from the past. He hears Forley and thinks it to be the name of a place, but after discoursing with the man he finds out that that is the man's name. A large shadow passes over him and the vision is gone. The professor (Toby Jones) and Forley (Jake Wilkinson) despite the difference in centuries dividing them are still able to converse with each other, and this conversation and this vision troubles the profeesor.
Even when, after his research on the Ditch, he arrives in the lecture hall the following morning, he finds all is not what he was expecting, and something strange and extraordinary happens.
In the 5th placeprint play, 'Nemeton', again directed by Jack Macnamara with very apt and clever sound design from Adam McCready, we move to the west of Cornwall to a place called Penwith, and the site of an acient Pagan well (a "nemeton"). As with the last play, it is the place that speaks, and here the unmarked, roughshod, dirt track that leads from the road to the nemeton is the speaker.
In the introduction to the play we learn that since Rudkin's visit in June 2009, the path has now completely changed and is both clearly signposted and concreted, and so is in effect a placeprint within a placeprint now.
This 20 minute monologue - read expertly by Michael Pennington - is far more reminiscent of a Victorian novel than a play. The hugely descriptive writing, the language used, the focus on proper names, smells, colours, senses. The path from the road to the site is, in reality perhaps quite short, and yet, the Dickensian prose style of this monologue makes this jouney last a lifetime. Every flower, every bush, every noise is commented upon, and it is only in the final few seconds do we finally reach the destination and title of the play.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 30/6/20
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