The Murder of Nicholas Radford
The Murder of Nicholas Radford
Due to the global pandemic of COVID-19, MED Theatre was sadly given no choice but to cancel three out of the five performances of this community play. However the performance at Manaton in March 2020 was filmed and you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mua-lQVJIU&feature=em-lsp
Simon Dell has also written the following review based on the live performance:
Just when you thought that a MED production couldn’t get any better following the brilliant performance of 'Stapledon' in 2018, The Murder of Nicholas Radford appears, and again takes centre stage! Again and again MED excel themselves and this play followed suit. Always robustly researched and based upon historical Dartmoor-connected fact, their performances are well attended. The venue for this particular event was so appropriate and to me it felt like being in a performance at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre with the audience on all sides of the performing area.
From the very outset the evening’s performance was enhanced by very appropriately composed music by members of the MED team and what followed was an historical treat. 'Radford' was hard-hitting, fast moving, well performed and clearly well researched. It was lovely to again see the age range of the cast cross several generations coping with the wonderful richness of the language of the period, which was at times very complex. Dr Tom Greeves hit the nail when he said, ‘Language that William Browne and Shakespeare would both have delighted in’. This reviewer loves Shakespeare and this performance was worthy of a robust stage of a national status.
The storyline is set in Devon in the 1450s – when allegiances were divided between William Lord Bonville and the Earl of Devon, Thomas Courtenay senior, with his sons Thomas and Henry. Between them stands the figure of Nicholas Radford, the most famous lawyer in the South West, seemingly championing the rule of law against the threat of violence that will eventually burst out into the War of the Roses. In the background, high up on Dartmoor, lurk the forces of darkness and the unwritten laws of natural justice, countering betrayal with revenge. The main story is supported with ancillary snippets of Dartmoor history and fact, legend and myth which all complemented the main theme in historical context. ‘The Murder of Nicholas Radford’ explores the consequences of the breakdown of the rule of law in charting the events surrounding the death of medieval Devon’s most famous lawyer. The play successfully manages to enter the medieval mind, and makes verbatim use of vivid contemporary accounts and the players are to be congratulated on learning such complex narrative.
MED Theatre has been engaging people in original drama inspired by local history, ecology, and current issues relevant to Dartmoor and Devon for over three decades - this story is a real eye-opener of the conditions prevailing at the time on Dartmoor. The company has evolved from a tradition of original community plays using local performers, composers, musicians, set designers, costume makers, choreographers, back-stage technicians and writers. MED theatre productions are inspired by Dartmoor’s industrial history, striking topography and distinctive ecology, combined with the contemporary social challenges faced by residents of the national park. As well as providing thought-provoking entertainment to audiences (made up of both local residents and visitors), the plays dramatise serious social, scientific and environmental issues relevant to Dartmoor and aim to promote the area's distinctiveness through its culture and its people.
The whole cast and team are to be congratulated for another excellent evening’s entertainment, education and enlightenment, and this reviewer, for one, is looking forward to their next production as always!
For more details see https://www.medtheatre.co.uk/projects/the-murder-of-nicholas-radford/
Nicholas Radford (c.1385 – 23rd October 1455) was a distinguished Westcountry lawyer, based north of Crediton at Upcott Barton in the parish of Cheriton Fitzpaine in Devon. It is presumed that he was educated at Oxford and at one of the Inns of Court in London, where lawyers in those days finished their training. In 1422 he married Thomasina Wyke. In 1423 he was appointed joint steward (with John Copleston) of the lands of the recently deceased Earl of Devon, Hugh Courtenay, for the duration of the minority of the Earl’s son Thomas (the elder), who was then only eight. When Thomas the elder was old enough to take charge of his inheritance, Radford remained his friend and became godfather to the Earl’s second son Henry, a far more significant role in those days than in modern times. During the 1430s and 1440s Radford played a significant part in public life, as an MP for Devon, as Recorder of Exeter, and as a barrister and judge. He also spent time in London. In 1451 it is recorded that he was chosen to arbitrate between Henry and William Wyke on one side, and Richard Wyke on the other, ‘concerning a certain tin-work called Bubhill Coombe, within the Forest of Dartmoor’. This where our play begins.Overshadowing Radford’s later years was the baronial rivalry between the Earl of Devon with his sons Thomas the younger and Henry, and Lord William Bonville of Shute. Courtenay and Bonville supported different sides in England’s medieval civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, Courtenay supporting the Lancastrian King Henry, while Bonville leaned towards the Yorkist cause. though they both swapped allegiances at one time or another. It seems that Radford had begun to act for Bonville in various cases which contributed to the aggrandisement of both, infuriating the Courtenays, who had previously regarded him as their dear and close friend.Then on October 23rd 1455, Radford was murdered. As Mrs G.H, Radford, in her article for the Transactions of the Devonshire Association in 1903, puts it: ‘The reason for this murder is unknown.’ The whole horrifying incident is described with extraordinary detail in a petition made to the King by Radford’s nephew. The Courtenays gave their henchmen license even to mistreat Radford’s sick wife:And among other rifling then and there, they found the said Nicholas Radford's wife in her bed, sore sick as she hath been this two years and more, and rolled her out of her bed, and took away the sheets that she lay in, and trussed them with the leftovers of the said goods.The behaviour of the two young Courtenay men, so vividly documented elsewhere in the petition, is extreme even for medieval times, particularly the mock inquest conducted by Henry and his subsequent desecration of Radford’s grave. The play speculates on an explanation for this commensurate with the level of passion and bitterness exhibited, bearing in mind John Hoker’s comment on the battle of Clyst Heath between Bonville and Courtenay in the same year ‘that the occasion thereof was, as some say, about a dog.’The text is written for the most part in blank verse, in particular modelled on the dramatic verse form of Thomas Kydd, Christopher Marlowe and the William Shakespeare of Henry VI part 3 - the ‘mighty line’ - as a means to get closer to the medieval mind, combined with verbatim dialogue from the petition.