The Saturday Play on Radio 4 this week was The Great Monkey Trial of Tennessee (available until this coming Saturday on the iPlayer), which tells the story of the Scopes Trial.
It’s a good listen and well worth catching. What I can’t quite work out is the play’s all-star provenance. The credit is BBC Wales, but with a cast including Neil Patrick Harris and Ed Asner, this probably wasn’t recorded in a studio in Cardiff.
I think it must be a special commission of an LA Theatre Works production. Ed Asner has appeared in one of their productions of this work previously, although it was a longer version of the play. But looking at the date on Audible, that production seems to date from 2006. Go back a bit, and there seems to be yet another 1994 production of this play, also featuring Ed Asner!
In the end, none of this matters. It’s a terrifc listen, and quite as relevant today in a world of Creationists and scientific illiteracy.
[Sorry – wrote this a couple of days ago and neglected to put it live. So now it’s no longer on the iPlayer]