Veil as Radio.
At the start of the 80’s the opportunity of producing my play, VEIL, for RTE Radio One came my way. I seized on it with gusto! (I was a Producer/Director in the radio Drama Department.)
Adapting what was essentially a stage play for radio was quite a challenge, entailing edits and re-writes. The sound supervision team – Anton Timoney and the late lamented Frank Corr – rallied to the cause…
(Afterwards Frank met me downstairs in the Radio Centre: “My mother heard Veil – she said it was the best play she ever listened to.” Praise indeed from a lady I have never met…)
Rehearsals began on Friday and ended on Sunday evening: Veil was in the can. Hats off to the team on the studio floor, the cast who made the production so memorable. Daphne Carroll as Ruth, Philip O’Sullivan as Benjamin, Brendan Cauldwell as Sadoc. But it is to Joe Taylor as Misach that the loudest plaudits should go, without a doubt. His was an astonishing tour de force.
Anton Timoney, sitting beside me in the Control suite, quietly put away at least some of the technical equipment he had assembled to bolster and enhance the Exorcism sequence – Misach’s outburst – the crescendo at the end of the play. No need of it! Such was the virtuosity of one Joe Taylor!
He speaks – but not with the voice of our son!
We speak with many voices – we are many…
We sat riveted, listening in amazement to the several voices – bass, falsetto and everything in between – spewing from the lips, the vocal cords, of this most talented artist… Indeed, such was the force of his performance at the very first rehearsal that Kevin Flood (Azarias) sat off-mike in studio, watching spellbound – and missed his line queue!
Veil was first broadcast on RTE Radio One at 3 pm on Good Friday, 1982. It was subsequently reviewed in the Irish Press. Vide Blog.