The Road, the House, the Road
Howard Barker
Production
Information
BBC Radio 4,
Cast
Johannes Aventinus/The
scholar Michael Pennington
Barbara/The lady Barbara
Flynn
Biro, the Soldier Sean
Baker
Producer/Director Richard
Wortley
Radio Times, 13th
July 2006, Frances Lass
If you are looking for an
unchallenging listen, tune in to something else , because Howard Barker’s new
play, commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the dramatist’s 60th birthday,
is a hard nut to crack. But it does resonate with great humour, philosophical
twists and rich language, exploring the nature of scholarship, power, and human
motivation. It takes as its central character Johannes Aventinus, a real-life
16th-century
humanist, and fictionalises his last journey home to see his new-born baby. On the
road he is waylaid by a lout who calls him “filth”, and sends him to visit a
house where a woman requires that he kill her. Will the scholar comply? And why
does her library have his childhood scrawls in its collection? Do not expect to
have easy answers.