Where Adam Stood
Alan Badel
Max Harris
Heather Canning
Jean Boht
Gareth Forwood
Ronald Hines
United Kingdom
77 minutes
21 April 1976
Production[edit]
As with Potter's 1971 serial about the life of Giacomo Casanova, Where Adam Stood is a loose adaptation of original source material set within a fictional framework. In Potter on Potter, the author told editor Graham Fuller that he used only a few pages of Father and Son as his starting point, and rejected the resultant play's status as a straight adaptation. Instead, Potter saw the play as part of a loose trilogy exploring an individual's choices (or rather, lack of them) in the face of seemingly omniscient forces; Where Adam Stood was to form the last part, preceded by Double Dare and Brimstone and Treacle, respectively (both 1976). The BBC's decision not to broadcast Brimstone effectively ended this idea, although Potter would continue to refer to the three as a connected trilogy in interviews and critical essays. Potter would also later tell Fuller that he considered Where Adam Stood to be amongst the "most satisfying" of his plays.[1]
Where Adam Stood, however, was written at a very difficult time for Potter. In 1974, his father died and this, coupled with a severe bout of psoriatic arthropathy, led to Potter developing writer's block. Double Dare was a reflection on the problems he was having writing, while Brimstone was written in response to the ravages of his debilitating illness; Where Adam Stood was Potter's reflection on the communication problems he faced in his relationship with his father.
Themes[edit]
Where Adam Stood contains none of the non-naturalistic flourishes that have become synonymous with Potter's work, although it does contain a number of familiar tropes he would explore in other pieces. The fall is represented by Mary Teague's sexual attack on the young Edmund in the woods, which Potter later described as a "physical acknowledgement" that the world is not as innocent or good as Edmund had previously been led to believe.[1] This sequence, which does not feature in Gosse's original book, is one of many that ties into the central theme of Edmund reclaiming himself from his father, who acts as the mouthpiece for an omniscient and unseen God. The boy's final act of using his prayers to deceive his father into allowing him to have the toy sailboat was, Potter explained, "a form of betrayal" and one that was "deeply rooted in [Philip Gosse's] religious language [...] He has observed the boy praying, but because his own faith has been tested he no longer knows what God expects of him anymore."
Intertextuality[edit]
Although Where Adam Stood is set on the Devonshire coast, the townsfolk appear to speak with Potter's native Forest of Dean dialect; this is used many times in Potter's original works.
'Mary Teague' appears, in name if not in person, in several Potter plays. In A Beast With Two Backs (1968) she is a miner's wife, whose husband's infidelity drives the play's narrative. She is also referred to in Cream in My Coffee (1980), when the curmudgeonly Bernard Wilsher (played by Lionel Jeffries) reminisces about a 'Mrs Teague' who used to live in his village; describing her as a "mad old woman with a cat".
The biblical passage Edmund attempts to memorise throughout the course of the play is the Epistle of St Paul to the Philippians. Potter had previously used this passage as the centrepiece to his 1972 drama Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Broadcast[edit]
The play was broadcast on BBC 2 on 21 April 1976. It was not repeated until 2005 as part of BBC Four's Potter season, marking the tenth anniversary of his death.
A request for a much earlier repeat had come from an unexpected source. Potter's critic, morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, greatly enjoyed the play and had requested a repeat on BBC 1 shortly after the original transmission. She wrote privately to Potter and the BBC conveying her appreciation.[6]