cover2cover: Recent Episodes
Dan Cotterall
It’s Sunday! Miss Brill extracts her fur from its box and heads gaily to the park where, like the other inhabitants of this southern French town, she will find a bench to sit on, and listen to the sounds struck up by the band in the rotunda. In Miss Brill’s case, these Sundays are a chance to listen in on the conversations of others, the other members of the cast… because, if truth be told, aren’t they all part of the weekly performance? This story by Katherine Mansfield is a finely chiselled everyday tragedy.
Measure for Measure was Shakespeare’s first Jacobean play. After acceding to the English throne in 1603, King James became the sponsor of Shakespeare’s theatrical troupe… and Shakespeare thumbed through the new monarch’s publications to see who he was dealing with. The Duke Vincentio of the play resembles King James 1. And yet Shakespeare succeeds in making this fantasticall Duke of dark corners both a problem solver and an eerily disturbing character.
The Cheek by Jowl production of Measure for Measure from 2016 - in Russian - dispenses with some of the comic characters to intensify its focus on the Duke. The setting for the Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play, from 2019, is 19th-century Vienna - lush and oppressive. It is fascinating to see how two top directing and design teams shake, shape and stir this great play – in which Isabella pronounces one of Shakespeare’s greatest speeches.
In this episode, we reflect on how these three stories - The Man in a Case, Gooseberries and About Love - intermesh. Chekhov draws his characters with gentle, clear-eyed irony. Like the curious figure of Mavra, these men fear to take decisive action, they clothe their deepest aspirations in silence and shy away from risk. There are brief moments of radiance but the rain that falls during these stories leaves hopes and dreams damp and defeated.
The final story in the trilogy – “About Love” – belongs to the landowner Alehin. Appointed a justice of the peace, Alehin has the opportunity to go regularly to town to attend the circuit court. There he meets the lovely Anna Alexyevna, a married woman to whom he is drawn and who is drawn to him. They go to the theatre together, sitting side by side, their shoulders touching. What will Alehin do? When should he speak?
Ivan Ivanovitch tells the second story – “Gooseberries” – about his brother Nikolai’s 25-year attempt to establish himself on a farm in the countryside where he can drink tea, watch his ducks swim and grow gooseberries. Dismissive of his brother’s rural ambition, Ivan Ivanovitch becomes passionate – in the warmth of the drawing room – about the importance of not allowing oneself to be lulled to sleep.
“The Man in a Case” is the first of three stories that Chekhov wrote around the year 1898 about the lives and characters of the schoolmaster Burkin, the veterinarian Ivan Ivanovitch and the landowner Alehin. This first story introduces the ludicrously cautious character Byelikov, a professor of Greek who is afraid of anything that involves risk and novelty. Burkin describes how, despite this temperament, Byelikov comes very near getting married…
The 6-year marriage between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes broke down in May 1962 when Hughes began an affair with another woman. That month, the furious Plath and the uneasy Hughes went on an excursion to the Devon coast. On a cliff-top, in a roaring wind, they came across some rabbit traps hidden in the grass. Both poets wrote a poem about this. This episode concentrates on Plath’s poem, written in that same month of May 1962.
The 6-year marriage between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes broke down in May 1962 when Hughes began an affair with another woman. That month, the furious Plath and the uneasy Hughes went on an excursion to the Devon coast. On a windswept cliff-top, they came across some rabbit traps hidden in the grass. Both poets wrote a poem about this. This episode concentrates on Hughes’ poem, written several years later.
Tara Westover's Educated is the autobiographical story of a girl born into a fundamentalist family in the USA. The family lives in rural Idaho, largely cut off from other people, as Tara's father prepares feverishly for the end of the world. Tara eventually manages to go to university. It's a story about being indoctrinated and controlled, about fanaticism, about courage, about learning to own one's own narrative, about realising that the people you love do not necessarily belong in your life, and about what it means to be educated.
This episode is devoted to a close reading of a poem that begins in the poet’s bedroom and ends with her staring forlornly into a stream. The poem is infused with a powerful sense of loss. Love is a vanished utopia. Too listless to comb her hair, or to refill the incense burner, the poet tracks time by watching the sun inch its way up her bamboo curtain…
In the year 1127, when the Jurchen armies invaded Shandong, Li QingZhao and her husband were forced to flee south and their precious art collection was scattered and largely destroyed. We discuss the powerful poem, from the poet’s final decade, that begins with an image of the sun setting like melted gold…
In this first of three episodes about the extraordinary 12th century Chinese poet Li Qingzhao, we talk to Lin Yan about the prosperity and sophistication of the Song Dynasty in which the poet and her art collector husband grew up, and read the famous short poem about a storm, a drinking session, a maid and a crabapple tree.
The Old English poem The Wanderer - about the loneliness of being a homeless outcast - dates from around the year 900. The final stanza, referring to our Heavenly Father, was probably added on by the monks that transcribed it: a Christian ending would have made it more acceptable to their abbot. Michael Alexander’s transposition of the poem into modern English, first published in the 1960s, is outstanding.
Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian tells the story of a woman who decides one day to stop eating meat, to renounce the 'chain of blood' that produces it. Her decision is rejected by her husband and her family, by a society that values conformity to social norms. We talk to Korean pharmacist Dan-Bi about this remarkable novel…
Anthony Burgess' novel Nothing Like the Sun is a fictional biography of Shakespeare's love life, with solid roots in history. The hypothesis underlying the novel is that emotional and physical pain moved Shakespeare away from the comedies of the 1590s to the tragedies of the early 1600s.
In this episode, we hear "WS" converse with the sailor Hoby on the bank of the River Avon, we follow him to Bath to buy playscripts, we see him encounter the Young Man of the Sonnets one night at the theatre. And then there is the Dark Lady, her face blessed to gold... and her mourner's eyes.
Elena Ferrante’s beautifully-crafted story "The Lost Daughter", first published in 2006, is set in a seaside resort on the Ionian coast over a single summer. It probes the pains, the joys and the unbearable absences of the mother-daughter bond.
We talk about the final two books of "My Brilliant Friend", the story of Lila and Lenù, and also, more generally, about the themes and preoccupations of Ferrante’s work, and the reactions she has provoked in her native Italy.
We take a look at the historical and political factors that influenced Shakespeare’s harrowing play: the accession of a new king with a project to unite England and Scotland, religious differences and disputes, treachery – including a plot to blow up Parliament, witches, political feuding, cruelty and pandemic.
In Daemonology, the book he published in 1597, Shakespeare’s contemporary and patron King James wrote: “The old and crafty serpent, being a spirit, easily spies our affections, and so conforms himself thereto, to deceive us to our wrack”. This is a concise plot summary of Shakespeare’s drama.
The first of two episodes about Justin Kurzel’s 2015 film of Shakespeare’s drama. Kurzel visually spectacular film delivers on both the physical and the psychological landscape of this story, on the weird sisters, on the increasing loneliness of the murderous couple, and on the cruelty of the period and of Fate or Weird.
Dan reads a dramatized, abridged version of a story by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) called “Spring in Fialta” about a fifteen-year romance between the narrator, Viktor, and Nina. The story is set in the imaginary seaside town Fialta, a word close in sound to the Russian word fialka (фиалка) meaning violet, like the violets that appear in Nina’s hands at the end of the story.
Soundscape by Tania Kumeda & Dan Cotterall
Guitar by Swedish artist Daniel Kaede (with permission from Epidemic Sound)
Dan comments on the style, symbolism and themes that Nabokov sews, in a virtuoso display, into his short story “Spring in Fialta”. The language is rich, showy and self-conscious, but there is tenderness and pathos in the story too, and at its heart... cowardice.
Music by German artist Dee Yan Key and French jazz/blues/folk band Dazie Mae.
Dan and Chiara pursue their conversation about the first two books, My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name, in Elena Ferrante's series of Neapolitan Novels. This episode includes two dramatized conversations between Lila (voiced by Chiara Crisafulli) and Lenù (voiced by Elena de Salvatore).
Dan talks to Chiara Crisafulli, an Italian woman who grew up in Sicily, about Elena Ferrante's extraordinary saga The Neapolitan Novels, about the lives of the two friends Lila and Lenù. This episode concentrates on the first two books in the series, My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name.
The myths of the Maori people of New Zealand are fascinating and imbued with humour as well as lyricism. Those myths form part of the backdrop to the 1986 novel, "The Matriarch", by the Maori writer Witi Ihimaera. Another key text from 20C NZ literature is the novel "Man Alone" by the pakeha writer John Mulgan.
Tania Kumeda & Dan Cotterall dramatize Part 7 of Tolstoy's epic novel "Anna Karenina": tense and upset, Anna decides to set off after Vronsky. She throws together a travel bag, has the horses put in to her carriage, and heads off in the May sunshine...
Crime fiction is a vast genre... with a huge audience worldwide. How does the Swedish tv series "Wallander" fit into the genre?
In this episode, we focus on the final two series of the landmark Swedish tv crime drama "Wallander", filmed between 2005 and 2013, with Krister Henriksson in the title role...
The actress Johanna Sällström (1974-2007) lights up the first series of the Swedish tv crime drama "Wallander"...
After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy had in a sense written himself out as a writer of fiction. So how did he occupy the last 30 years of his life? And what happened when he died?
Anna Karenina, by Lev Tolstoy, is one of the greatest novels in Western literature - second of two podcasts
Anna Karenina, by Lev Tolstoy, is one of the greatest novels in Western literature - first of two podcasts
To what extent did Hamlet really know his father?
Why does Gertrude never speak about Old Hamlet?
Why did Gertrude embark on an affair with Claudius?
Hamlet has been away at university...
When he came to revise Hamlet, Shakespeare was very much influenced by the ideas of the French writer Michel de Montaigne...
We talk about 3 cinema Ophelias...
--Mariah Gale from the 2009 BBC production
--Kate Winslet, who played Ophelia opposite Kenneth Branagh in the lavish 1996 movie
--the incandescent Anastasiya Vertinskaya was cast as Ophelia by Grigori Kozintsev in his 1964 film
The first few lines of Shakespeare's iconic play introduce the mood and key themes.
It is bitter cold
Who's there?
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.