Stewart Parker by Marilynn Richtarik;

Author:Marilynn Richtarik; [Richtarik;, Marilynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199695034
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2012-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

11

Leaps of Faith

On 17 May 1980, Stewart Parker noted in his journal the nineteenth anniversary of the amputation of his left leg. ‘The same span led up to its loss—so I suppose I now begin a third life’, he wrote: ‘Here’s good health to it.’ His second life had begun abruptly with his cancer diagnosis, but in Hopdance, the novel he wrote about the experience, Parker presents this as preceded by a long period of dissatisfaction and inchoate longing, during which his alter ego suffers under the malign influence of an emotional ‘canker’. Similarly, in the early 1980s, an upheaval in Parker’s life followed a protracted period of discontent and nervous tension. As his marriage came to seem more an endurance test than a source of renewed strength and his home in Edinburgh less a haven than a proving ground, he seized on his work and the travel it necessitated as a means of escape and diversion. His frequent absences and periodic immersion in the exigencies of production allowed Parker to maintain (though barely at times) his patience with his wife’s troubles and his own equilibrium. This delicate balance was upset, however, when he fell in love by imperceptible degrees with the wife of a collaborator. This unlooked-for development led to profound changes in Parker’s life, and the theme of love’s transforming power features prominently in two plays of the period, Pratt’s Fall and Joyce in June.

After the strain of the previous year, 1981 began auspiciously with the news that the radio version of The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner had won a Giles Cooper Award as one of the four best radio plays transmitted by the BBC in 1980.1 Recipients had been chosen from a field of nearly 500 original radio plays, and the panel of judges included the distinguished drama critic Martin Esslin. Sponsored jointly by the BBC and publisher Eyre Methuen, the award entailed, in lieu of a cash prize, publication in a volume with the other winners. Parker, always avid to have his plays in print, probably hoped his inclusion would give him leverage with Methuen’s drama editor, Nick Hern, another of the judges. In any case, he felt proud to have collected ‘the hat-trick of prizes—in theatre, TV & radio’.2

The television version of Kamikaze fared less well. Its transmission, in mid-February, confirmed the reservations of those who had passed on the project. Parker’s producer friend Rob Buckler, for instance, returning a copy of the radio script to Parker in November 1979, had written, ‘as I think you suggested from the outset, it isn’t really suitable for film.… it really is an out-and-out radio play’.3 Parker had been anxious to write for television again, however, at least in part for the sake of the comparatively large fees television work generated. When he got the chance to remake Kamikaze, he convinced himself of the aesthetic value of the endeavour. He had enjoyed embellishing the script with songs and re-conceptualizing it for a visual medium, and he liked what the actors brought to it.

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