Maud

The Telegraph today has another great review of Maud.

Anniversaries are a spurious sort of reason to celebrate artists, but who cares? On Saturday, Radio 4's commemoration of the bicentenary of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's birth took the form of a reading of Maud by Joseph Millson.

It was a revelation: passionate and coherent. I love Tennyson – a bit of a shameful infatuation until lately – and poems like The Grandmother's Apology can make me cry in public places, but I'd never quite got the point of Maud. Great poetry, read aloud, is one of the things that radio is made for.

The Stage recommends tomorrow's BBC Radio 4 broadcast of Maud in its Radio Picks list.

Award-winning sound designer Christopher Shutt brings his talents to bear in a tale of a disturbed young man who roams windswept vistas, haunted by his father’s suicide and his mother’s early death. Joseph Millson performs Tennyson’s poem and captures the rapid mood-swings of Tennyson’s disturbed, dangerous and yearning protagonist.