Moments of magic

The talk is that we’ve yet to experience the cuts that will have to be implemented to balance the nation’s books, but on the quiet, in suburban backstreets, behind closed doors, along cultural throughways and byways not often visited we know that they’re already happening, big time.

The talk is that we’ve yet to experience the cuts that will have to be implemented to balance the nation’s books, but on the quiet, in suburban backstreets, behind closed doors, along cultural throughways and byways not often visited we know that they’re already happening, big time. Look no further than Sunday’s Classic Serial on Radio 4 for a signal of how they might affect what we’ll be listening to in future decades (not just years). The huge sprawling Indian epic, The Ramayana, has been hurriedly put together in just two hour-long episodes instead of developed into a nice long meaty series. This meant that what we heard were the bullet points of love and war, rather than a lavish, colourfully embroidered portrayal of ordinary mortals struggling to overcome the tests of endurance, honour and duty set by the mischievous gods.

Amber Lone’s script is a valiant effort to compress the tale of Prince Rama and his beautiful doe-eyed wife Sita who are cast into exile with his faithful brother Lakshman after a palace coup. But 120 minutes cannot do justice to the ancient Sanskrit poem, which springs from as far back as at least the 4th century BC and runs to 24,000 stanzas. For some ardent readers it provides a religious exercise, repeating favourite passages day after day as a step-by-step guide to enlightenment. Others regard it as theatre, a dramatic tale with complementary characters acting out the huge variety of human experience.