Simon Armitage. Hudba Gary Yershon. Režie Susan Roberts.
Osoby a obsazení: vypravěč (Ian McKellen), Sir Gawain (Samuel West), Zelený rytíř/Sir Bertilak (David Fleeshman), Bertilakova žena (Deborah McAndrew), Arthur/sluha (Conrad Nelson).
Natočeno 2006. Premiéra 21. 12. 2006 (BBC Radio 4, 14:15 – 15:00 h.; 44 min.).
Pozn.: Set in Arthurian Britain at Christmas time with the knights of the Round Table, whose festivities at Camelot are disrupted by the appearance of a green knight. The stranger has come to lay down a challenge – a test of courage and heart which Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew, accepts.
Having studied English Literature at university, it’s surprising I’d not read Sir Gawain until the radio producer Sue Roberts shewed me her husband’s new version, which she asked me to read for BBC.
The Armitages and I met up in the BBC studios in Manchester earlier this year and in a morning completed my contribution. I was sorry the other speakers were recorded at another time, because I should like to have worked with Sam West, whose father Tim was with me in Richard 11 and Edward 11, when Sam was a baby.
It might have been unnerving, performing within earshot of the poet, but Simon hadn’t heard his lines outloud before I spoke them and was so taken with the experience that the atmosphere was relaxed. His verse has followed the rhythms and rhymes of the original so that, as with his own poetry, Sir Gawain benefits form being heard read rather than read silently from the page
– Ian McKellen (Narrator), December 2006