Albert's bridge;: And, If you're Glad I'll be Frank: two plays for radio

by Tom Stoppard

Albert has a degree in philosophy and with a job as bridge painter has a new perspective on life up high. Through CPSs and programmed efficiency, he replaces four painters and the bridge is all his. He also has to get married - but that's another story. He's bothered by a reluctant suicide and by 1400 additional painters causing the bridge and Albert's dream to collapse.|2 women, 10 men

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Sir Tom Stoppard was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.

Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.

He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
Tom Stoppard's award-winning play about a philosophy graduate named Albert, employed to help paint the cantilevered railway bridge spanning Clufton Bay.

Starring John Hurt as Albert, Haydn Jones as Fraser, Barbara Mitchell as Kate, Victor Lucas as the Chairman, Ronald Herdman as Fitch, Betty Hardy as Mother, Alan Dudley as Father, Nigel Anthony as Bob, Alexander John as Charlie, Geoffrey Wincott as Dad, Anthony Jackson as George and Ian Thompson as Dave.

In 1968, 'Albert Bridge' won both the Prix Italia prize in Rome and the Czechoslovak International Radio Play Festival in Prague.

Producer: Charles Lefeaux
First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in July 1967.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ynt1d

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Upasana Saraf · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the first plays I read as a teenager and it completely resonated with my existential angst.. crisp and crusty!

[Tom O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a little gem of a play. Put me in mind of the Squeeze classic song Up The Junction for some reason but with a Stoppard twist of wit and comedy amongst the kitchen sinkery of course. Slight but smart.

[Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked the sound of this radio play in Stoppard’s Imagine documentary on the BBC. John Hurt plays a philosophy student juggling his anti-intellectual mother, the stifling expectations of joining his Dad’s metal company and eventually a nagging wife and crying baby.

He finds solace and purpose in the perspective that painting the local bridge allows him, literally seeing everything like a train set from his vantage point and observing the background hum to be in B flat. He soon becomes obsessed with the role, giving it his absolute all.

The solitude doesn’t last though as he is joined by a man who is seeking to escape the pressures of urban sprawl via suicide but always changes his mind on ascending the bridge due to a similar appreciation of the view. This intensifies when the local council bureaucrats decide to send up hundreds of other painters to join him, destroying his lone vigil for good.

[Douglas Cosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short radio play about a guy who ends up (after gov't bureaucracy) as the sole painter of a large bridge -- basically a never-ending job that he uses as an escape from the real world. Nice tight ending to this allegorical hammer to the head -- fun, early Stoppard. I had read/listened to this before, but this time I listened to it with a Stoppard newbie (my son), and it was more fun than ever. Cynical, philosophical, and comedic -- this is an easy starting point if you want to see what Stoppard is about and you don't want to bite off Rosencrantz or Arcadia yet. Better listened to than read since it was created to be delivered via the radio. It has rhythmic, repetitious language that really shines when you listen to it; something that doesn't quite come through when you read it.

[Alexander Van Leadam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Relistening to Albert's Bridge brought me back to the heady days of late adolescence, when such plays with a message were much admired. How naive we were, confusing idealism with pretention! Not that today's hypocrisy is any better ...

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to the radio play of Albert's Bridge, did not read, which is probably better, because the prose sounds like poetry when it's performed, in a way that probably doesn't come through quite as well on the page. A cautionary tale for workaholics. Hear here, Mr. Chairman.

As for the other play, I think I need to listen to it again. I got the point, I think, but it feels like there is probably more there.

[Joanna Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyed this ! small and sad and weird and alegorical but in a lovely way I thought ... I get it ! much more than Arcadia

[Scott Trost · Rating 4 out of 5]

radio play about a guy painting a bridge by himself. Scene with wife as she complains about him throwing himself into his work and ignoring her, and short scene with guy who climbs up to jump. Other shorter scenes with boss and parents. Odd little play about the absurdity of modern life.

[Sandi G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this play. I heard it as a BBC radio play in the early seventies. Albert's dilemma, painting a bridge that needs painting again on one end as soon as he gets to the other end is such a delicious allegory for everything in our lives. Also, there's a man who keeps climbing the bridge to commit suicide because of the Chaos that is life, but when he gets up to the top of the bridge to jump he realizes that from afar everything looks orderly and logical. So he goes back down and is driven to climb back up to jump off and so on...Well done, funny and dry.