Freedom in September

Freedom in September

1962 - United Kingdom

A Soviet musician is missing from his hotel. He wanders through London trying to contact people he has met and known in Russia. Who are these people? What lies behind his desperate search? 

In Freedom in September author Leo Lehman focuses attention on those brief, but regular 1960s news items which announced that yet another Russian visitor had resolved to make his home in Britain, and asked for political asylum.

Deftly, sensitively, without taking sides, Lehman examines one of these situations in the making, laying bare all the frustration, the loneliness and heart-searching which such a decision entails. He is concerned, not with the famous - like dancer Rudolph Nureyev - whose welcome was assured, but with an ordinary citizen who necessarily will pay a higher price for freedom.

"For these people who are welcome but not particularly wanted by anyone, the difficulties are much greater," said Lehmann. “Lencherenko (Joseph Furst) in my play is a man like this. He knows that if he stays he will be alone in a strange country. He must abandon the life he has known - the good things as well as the bad."

Lehmann emphasised that the play was about people - not politics. Lecherenko, a minor composer, unknown in the West, is a member of a Russian cultural delegation on a good-will visit to London. He leaves the party so that he can be alone while making the final, fateful decision on whether he will stay or go home.

We first see Lomov (Martin Sterndale), leader of the delegation, unwilling to admit that Lecherenko has disappeared as he starts the discreet, polite, deceptively unhurried enquiries that go on throughout the play. Meanwhile, as the composer in his dilemma seeks out various people he knows, he is helped by a sympathetic journalist, Prince (Patrick Troughton). He also meets a Russian exile Dornik (Alan MacNaughton) who has himself been faced with the same agonising decision.

Also in the cast were Patsy Rowlands as Ivy and Amanda Barrie as a maid. The play was directed by Joan Kemp-Welch. Broadcast in the Play of the Week strand on Tuesday 18 September 1962 at 9.15 to 10.45pm.

Published on March 3rd, 2020. Written by Sarah Snow - based on original TV Times article and adapted for Television Heaven.

Read Next...

Cold Equations

A teenager stows away aboard a rocket in order to visit her brother on another planet. But her actions put everyone else's safety in jeopardy.

Also tagged Single Play

The Close Prisoner

"We are all conceived in close prison: in our mother's wombs, we are close prisoners all...and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death..." John Donne.

Also tagged Single Play

After the Funeral

When Alun Owen's play 'After the Funeral' was read by Sydney Newman, head of drama for ABC Television, and William Kotcheff, the television director, they were so taken by his conception of Wales and the Welsh, they decided to see for themselves.

Also tagged Single Play

It's A Living

Long-time comedy double-act Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris star in a sitcom about a couple running a small general store.

Also released in 1962

Animal Magic

Presented by the inimitable Johnny Morris, the man who not only spoke to the animals, but also for them, Animal Magic was a firm children's favourite on BBC television for no less than 21 years.

Also released in 1962

Man of the World

Armed with camera, typewriter and a trained eye for the unusual and newsworthy, freelancer Mike Straight enjoyed a glamorous lifestyle that continuously saw him getting involved in cases of blackmail, espionage and murder.

Also released in 1962

Checkmate

An expensive investigative agency operating in San Francisco protects the lives of people who had become targets of the criminal underworld.

Also released in 1962

Dr Finlay's Casebook

Based on a series of stories 'The Adventures of a Black Bag' by Dumbartonshire born novelist A. J. Cronin, Doctor Finlay's Casebook proved to be an instant hit with viewers in spite of stiff competition from US exports Dr Kildare and Ben Casey.

Also released in 1962

Albert TV play

Single play based on a true story about an ingenious and daring escape from a German POW camp for Allied naval officers during WW2

Also tagged Single Play