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Artist Descending a Staircase is Tom Stoppard's 1972 radio play that centers around a murder mystery involving an artist who dies from falling down a set of stairs [1].
The play opens with the sound of the artist, Donner, falling down the stairs. The other two roommates, Martello and Beauchamp, enter and find their 50 year old friend at the bottom of the staircase. Beauchamp, who is an artist whose focus is on the sounds of daily life, examines a recording of the sounds of Donner's fall. The pair decides that a murderer must have awakened Donner from his sleep and then pushed him down the stairs to his death. Martello and Beauchamp accuse each other of the crime. The following scenes flash back to several different years at least 50 years in the past. This part of the play follows the three artists and their interactions with a blind woman named Sophie. The end of the play returns to the present. Martello and Beauchamp are unable to solve the mystery, but Stoppard alerts the audience to the truth. When the audience witnesses a fly buzzing around the studio and Beauchamp's attempts to swat it, they realize that Donner must have fallen down the stairs in pursuit of the fly. The play ends with Beauchamp recording over the sounds of Donner's death.
[edit] References
- ^ Play Reviews at http://www.artscope.net/PAREVIEWS/ArtistDesc0501.shtml
