xcalibr39
10-22-2007, 04:23 PM
Can anyone help me to identify a play I heard on BBC radio many years ago? I think it was around 1973, on the Third Programme. I guess you'd say the theme was a variation on The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
A group of people wake to find themselves locked in a room. Puzzling over what they are doing there, they begin to recount their life stories. It turns out that each person had died a heroic death, and it finally dawns on them that God has a less favorable view of their actions and has condemned them to hell, which consists in spending eternity locked in this room with one another.
One of the characters had been a newspaper editor, in Algeria I think, who dared to publish something politically incorrect and was assassinated. He was finally honored on earth, but was being punished by God because he should have given more thought to his wife and family. The Algeria connection made me think of Camus, but I could have sworn the BBC said it was by Ionesco. Yet I have been unable to identify such a play by either of them.
Perhaps the play is considered so minor that its theme is not covered in the usual Internet sources?
~~~Peter.
A group of people wake to find themselves locked in a room. Puzzling over what they are doing there, they begin to recount their life stories. It turns out that each person had died a heroic death, and it finally dawns on them that God has a less favorable view of their actions and has condemned them to hell, which consists in spending eternity locked in this room with one another.
One of the characters had been a newspaper editor, in Algeria I think, who dared to publish something politically incorrect and was assassinated. He was finally honored on earth, but was being punished by God because he should have given more thought to his wife and family. The Algeria connection made me think of Camus, but I could have sworn the BBC said it was by Ionesco. Yet I have been unable to identify such a play by either of them.
Perhaps the play is considered so minor that its theme is not covered in the usual Internet sources?
~~~Peter.