BBC R4 - Leonid Borodin's 'The Year Of Miracle And Grief'
Adapted by Nick McCarty
Directed by Sean Mcloughlan
Broadcast December 10, 1989
[Later rebroadcast in the 'Monday Play' series. This
recording made from a 'Sunday Playhouse' broadcast.]
Coded from tape at 128/44.1

Leonid Borodin was a prisoner of conscience in 1960s' Russia. He
took part in the hunger strikes at Camp 17 with Yuli Daniel and
Aleksandr Ginzburg*. Released in 1973, he was arrested again in
1982. This work dates from his second period of imprisonment.

Superficially the play is about a family's move to a town by Lake Baikal
where the parents have been contracted to teach. It's also about their
son's discovery of a magic cave, and his subsequent involvement in a
feud between supernatural beings living there.

It now seems to me that the feud is a simile for the intellectual
conflict in late period Soviet Russia, and Lake Baikal a metaphor for
the incorruptibility of the Russian soul. But what do I know?

Cast [Spellings' suspect]
Leonid - Steve Hodgeson
Leon - Tom Laurence
Sarma - Mary Wimbush
Bikolar - William Eadle
Ree - Caroline Backhouse
Father - Brett Usher
Mother - Joanna Myers
Asina - June Barrey
Grandad - Norman Jones
Teacher - Phillida Nash
Baikolla - Russ Wilkinson
Yerka - Luke Robertson
Schlepka - Lydia Robertson
Yelka - Laura Hawkridge
Yenka - Edward Jones
Messier - Neil Roberts

*See Roger McGough's poem 'The Russian Bear'.
Quote:
'The Russian bear must itself save
from its self inflicted plight.
Having hollowed out the darkest cave,
Complains there is no light.'
___________________
My parent recording is a spot slow. I've condensed the file's
duration to 65 minutes from 73, which is about right. But electronic
pitch changers are not uniform. And so, in places, this change shows.
Not badly - not everyone will notice.