The Terence Davies trilogy: children: Madonna and child: death and transfiguration

Davies found the form in his partly autobiographical trilogy to transform Liverpudlian Robert Tucker’s development - from victimised schoolboy, in ‘Children’ (1976) through a Catholic repressed gay middle age ‘Madonna and Child’ (1980), to senility and death in hospital ‘Death and Transfiguration’ (1983) - into a rich, resonant tapestry of impressionistic detail. The bleakness is relieved by a wry wit, imaginative use of music and flashes of surrealism foreshadowing Davies’ subsequent autobiographies “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes”. The trilogy is finally a spiritual work anchored firmly in the flux of everyday experience. Cast includes: ‘Children’; Phillip Maudsely (young Robert), Nick Stringer and Robin Hooper (Robert aged 23): ‘Madonna and child’; Terry O’Sullivan (Robert) and Sheila Raynor: ‘Death and transfiguration’; Wilfred Brambell (elderly Robert), Terry O’Sullivan (middle aged Robert), and Iain Munro.