Kyle’s Reviews > Plays 2: The Dissolution of Dominic Boot / 'M' is for Moon Among Other Things / If You're Glad I'll Be Frank / Albert's Bridge / Where are They Now? / Artist Descending a Staircase / The Dog it Was That Died / In the Native State > Status Update

A very Christopher Nolanesque radio play, kind of like Inception in construction, but more like Memento in subject matter: two aging artists must uncover which of them murdered a third, and a series of flashbacks sends them hurtling back to France on the cusp of the Great War. Along the way, they become entangled with a blind woman who later haunts as inspiration for various forms of avant-gardisms.

An amusing story that ends up tragically serious for the dissolute Dominic, a city-dweller who spends all he has to get from one possible source of money to the next, costing him more and more as the taxi driver takes all. And while the short play very specifically deals with a bootless Mr Boot counting shillings and pence in his head, a more universal characteristic reveals how we borrow from Peter to pay back Paul.

The first version of Indian Ink played much more breezily for the radio - not so many interruptions from Prof. Pike, but his footnoting presence in the letter scenes still assures he (and thus scholarship) will forever have the wrong end of the stick. Layered among the many literary references is a hint about later play Invention of Love'a Housman, a subtle call-out to Edenic Out of Africa.

After reading Dan Falk's In Search of Time, it's amusing to read a play pre-dating that book that riffs so much on the unknowable qualities of Time that only a few minds like Gladys fully comprehend, hidden under the surface of cycling hours, minutes and seconds pip pip pipping. Frustrated Frank tries to rescue her from the baffling bureaucracy, even allowing her to go back and be a nun if the Lord wills it.

The dog will have his day, except for one dreadful night on a barge that was an end for the titular mutt and more of a drawn-out death for the figurative one named Purvis, at the end of his rope running messages between two masters. Blair seems content on behalf of one master to keep Purvis on a short leash as long as it keeps his house full of clocks and other capitalistic curiosities. Too bad this cat couldn't mew!

Going full-tilt with the moon references, this instance is the name Constance associated with the letter M since childhood and now as she is slipping into an early second one, only at 42 and a half years old! Her husband Alfred is a piece of work: distracted by the tidbits of news, including the death of Marilyn Monroe, yet frustrated the his wife obsesses over the monthly world sent courtesy of her brother's behest.

One, and perhaps the only, play to contain some autobiographical reference, Stoppard muses on the rosy-coloured glasses a bunch of old boys wear as the reminisce on the snow-filled days of yesteryear at boarding school. A few of them have got the right story, or unlike Jenkins, the right school in mind. Yet with few sound cues, the scenes shuttles between past and present, very much the precursor to Arcadia.