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JONATHAN BIGNELL work by Shakespeare, Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw on radio or television alongside dramatizations of canonical novels by Jane Austen and George Eliot, for example. The stifling of new, experimental or foreign drama that this policy produced was relieved by the creation of the Third Programme, whose output was strongly influenced by the appointment of Donald McWhinnie as Gielgud’s deputy in 1953, working with Michael Bakewell and Barbara Bray to commission and produce drama scripts.'* Later, when Gielgud stepped down, he was replaced by Martin Esslin, who had just produced his book on the Absurd which linked and praised Beckett and Pinter.’° When taken to lunch by Gielgud, Esslin reported that Gielgud told him, “I hate Brecht, I hate Beckett, I hate Pinter. But I know what my duty is. That’s why I’ve appointed you to deal with these people.””° Bakewell, Bray, Esslin, and McWhinnie were supporters of the new drama of the period, especially Beckett and Pinter, with interests in experimental uses of the radio medium,” and a significantly different attitude began to prevail after Gielgud retired. All That Fall was directed by McWhinnie and broadcast on the Third Programme on 13 January 1957, featuring Patrick Magee. The French version of Endgame, Fin de Partie, was broadcast on 2 May 1957, produced by Bakewell, using the same cast as the Royal Court Theatre’s world premiere of the play three weeks previously, including Jean Martin and Roger Blin, with Jacques Brunius as a narrator. Beckett’s Embers was broadcast on 24 June 1959, directed by McWhinnie, with Magee and Jack MacGowran. Shortly afterwards, on 29 July 1959, BBC broadcast Pinter’s first play for radio, A Slight Ache, directed by McWhinnie and featuring Maurice Denham, Pinter’s wife Vivien Merchant, and Pinter himself (under the pseudonym David Baron). Pinter’s A Night Out was directed by McWhinnie for a Third Programme broadcast of 1 March 1960 and repeated later that month. Beckett’s version of the French New Wave writer Robert Pinget’s The Old Tune (La Manivelle) was produced by Bray and broadcast on 23 August 1960, with Beckett’s collaborators Magee and MacGowran appearing again. Pinter’s The Dwarfs, written for radio and produced by Bray, was on 2 December that year. It was BBC radio that first presented Beckett’s Endgame on 22 May 1962, ina version adapted and produced by Bakewell and a cast that included Maurice Denham and Donald Wolfit. Beckett’s Words and Music, with music by John Beckett, was produced by Bakewell and featured Magee and Felix Felton. Its first Ihird 18 Ibid., 137. 1% Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1961. 20 Chignell: British Radio Drama, 653. 2 Everett Frost: Fundamental Sounds: Recording Samuel Beckett’s Radio Plays, Theatre Journal, Vol. 43, No. 3 (1991), 361-376; Jonathan Kalb: The Mediated Quixote: The Radio and Television Plays and Film, in J. Pilling (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Beckett, Cambridge, Cambridge University, 1994, 124-144; Donald McWhinnie: The Art of Radio, London, Faber, 1959. .68 +
