Victoria Regina - Radio

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

have you heard Victoria Regina? When you did, and the part where Prince Albert dies, what did he die of?
i got the book based on the play and found out that he died of gastric fever, and the lamebrain of a doctor, who was being told by two other doctors, that he would not be fine.

that's like the doctor that told me a friend of mine, who had gotten into a motorcycle accident, and the doctor said they would be fine. then five minutes later they were dead.

do doctors really know what they think they know.
good grief


bye now.

[mteal]

One of my local libraries has an LP set on Helen Hayes and Orson Welles, with a clean sounding recording of VICTORIA REGINA. Hayes had made a big splash on the stage with REGINA, and Welles makes a comment at the beginning that it was nice that the Mercury could bring her performance to the masses who wouldn't have been able to hear it otherwise. Thought about that way, the Mercury's radio programs seem almost like a continuation of the Federal Theatre Project. It's too bad Welles didn't adapt more of his FTP and Mercury stage work for the airwaves.

As for Prince Albert's premature death in 1862, the show seems to imply that it was brought on by the stress of Britain having been caught aiding the confederacy during the Civil War, and the near war with the Union that resulted. Apparently, Prince Albert helped smoothe things out with Lincoln, who reportedly said, "One War at a Time".