The Penny Dreadfuls Present...
- Radio comedy drama
- BBC Radio 4 / BBC Radio 7
- 2008 - 2020
- 18 episodes (2 series)
Radio comedies in which sketch group The Penny Dreadfuls - aka Humphrey Ker, David Reed and Thom Tuck - present plays around historical subjects. Also features Ingrid Oliver and Miles Jupp.
Episode menu
Revolution - The Penny Dreadfuls Present: Revolution
Further details
The French Revolution was one of the most far-reaching social and political upheavals in modern history spanning 10 years and involving the execution of the King, collapse of monarchy and slaughter of thousands at the guillotine. The Penny Dreadfuls will attempt to tell the epic story of the Revolution in one hour with jokes.
The play's two main characters are Maximilien Robespierre the dictatorial architect of the Reign of Terror, who sent thousands to their death and Marie-Therese, the 16 year old daughter of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.
Marie-Therese was incarcerated for three years by the revolutionaries. When she was locked up her father, mother, aunt and little brother were also with her. After the execution of her father the rest of the family were moved to another part of the tower and Marie-Therese was kept in solitary confinement. It is recorded that Robespierre visited Marie-Therese at one point in the tower but there is no historical record of that conversation. This play is that conversation.
Broadcast details
- Date
- Saturday 9th July 2011
- Time
- 2:30pm
- Channel
- BBC Radio 4
- Length
- 60 minutes
Cast & crew
| Humphrey Ker | Various |
| David Reed | Various |
| Thom Tuck | Various |
| Richard E. Grant | Robespierre |
| Sally Hawkins | Marie-Therese |
| Margaret Cabourn-Smith | Ensemble Actor |
| Humphrey Ker | Writer |
| David Reed | Writer |
| Thom Tuck | Writer |
Press
Gillian Reynolds on The Penny Dreadfuls Present Guy Fawkes
The Penny Dreadfuls Present... Guy Fawkes (Radio 4, Thursday) is the sort of piece only a generation who understands little of war and persecution could produce. David Reed, Humphrey Ker and Thom Tuck, The Penny Dreadfuls themselves, wrote and acted it. They made the past into a comedy with an occasionally serious slant across a generally childlike address to bone crushing, the rack, the gallows and men in black hats with silly beards. The audience at the recording roared with laughter throughout. When you're too young to know about England's religious wars you think nothing about putting a Guy onto the bonfire. When you're old enough to play at being childish, hanging, drawing and quartering is surely no longer a joke.
Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph, 9th November 2009