Penda's Fen

The Play for Today logo, seen here in the opening title sequence from 1976.

Penda's Fen is a British television play which was written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke. Commissioned by BBC producer David Rose, it was transmitted as part of the corporation's Play for Today series.

Plot summary

Set in the village of Pinvin, near Pershore in Worcestershire, England, against the backdrop of the Malvern Hills, it is an evocation of conflicting forces within England past and present. These include authority, tradition, hypocrisy, landscape, art, sexuality, and most of all, its mystical, ancient pagan past. All of this comes together in the growing pains of the adolescent Stephen, a vicar's son, whose encounters include angels, Edward Elgar and King Penda himself. The final scene of the play, where the protagonist has an apparitional experience of King Penda and the "mother and father of England", is set on the Malvern Hills.^[1][2]

Original cast

Spencer Banks starred as Stephen, with a cast including Jennie Hesselwood, Ian Hogg and Georgine Atkinson. Music was by Paddy Kingsland of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Critical response

Critics have noted that the play stands apart from Clarke's other, more realist output. Clarke himself admitted that he did not fully understand what the story was about.^[3] Nonetheless it has gone on to acquire the status of minor classic, and has been rebroadcast several times on the BBC.

Following the original broadcast Leonard Buckley, The Times wrote:

Make no mistake. We had a major work of television last night. Rudkin gave us something that had beauty, imagination and depth.^[4]

In 2006, Vertigo magazine described Penda's Fen as “One of the great visionary works of English film”.^[5]

In 2011, Penda's Fen was chosen by Time Out London magazine as one of the 100 best British films. They described the play as:

A multi-layered reading of contemporary society and its personal, social, sexual, psychic and metaphysical fault lines. Fusing Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ with a heightened socialism of vibrantly localist empathy, and pagan belief systems with pre-Norman histories and a seriously committed – and prescient – ecological awareness, ‘Penda’s Fen’ is a unique and important statement.^[6]

It has yet to receive a DVD release.

Further reading

• David Rudkin: Sacred Disobedience: an expository study of his drama 1959-96 by David Ian Rabey, Oxford, Routledge, 1998 ISBN 90-5702-126-9
• Rolinson, D. Alan Clarke Manchester University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-7190-6830-4

See also

• Manichaeism
• The Dream of Gerontius - Elgar's oratorio

References

1. ^ David Rudkin: Sacred Disobedience: an expository study of his drama 1959-96 by David Ian Rabey, Oxford, Routledge, 1998 ISBN 90-5702-126-9
2. ^ Rolinson, D. Alan Clarke Manchester University Press, 2005 ISBN 0-7190-6830-4
3. ^ http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/439460/
4. ^ http://www.elidor.freeserve.co.uk/pendasfen.htm
5. ^ http://www.vertigomagazine.co.uk/showarticle.php?sel=bac&siz=1&id=358
6. ^ http://www.timeout.com/london/feature/855/100-best-british-films-the-list/3

External links

• Penda's Fen at the Internet Movie Database
• Synopsis at BFI screenonline
• Review at TV Cream
• Interview with David Rose and Peter Ansorge