Radio Drama: Talk to Me: Ayn Rand by Sara Davies and Abigail Youngman
Ayn Rand, the Russian-American writer and philosopher who lived by the motto “greed is good”, rose to prominence in the 1950s. Her books continue to sell and her ideas remain influential today – she believed ‘rational self-interest’ should guide an individual’s actions; and that altruism was ‘evil’. Not surprisingly, perhaps, President Trump is allegedly a fan.
In
Sara Davies and Abigail Youngman’s engaging drama, award-winning director Mary
Ward-Lowery ‘interviews’ the people closest to her: husband Frank O’Connor
(Rupert Wickham) who she married for his film-star looks, her sister Nora
Drobysheva (Tracy-Ann Oberman), housekeeper Eloise (Kerri McLean) and Rand
herself (Diana Quick) in an attempt to discover the woman behind the headlines.
Rand
was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in St Peterburg in 1905. She was barely a
teenager when the communists confiscated her family’s property. After
graduating from university, her family raised the money to send her to the US
in 1926 where she changed her name and “embraced American values”.
Rand
lived by her philosophy. Claiming love consisted of the ‘selfish pleasure’ of
two individuals acting on reason, Rand chose her husband, Frank, for his
film-star looks. When she had an affair with psychology student Nathaniel Branden,
she called a meeting and made the spouses begrudgingly agree to the
arrangement.
In
1974, Nora visited Rand in New York. They had not seen one another for almost
forty years. Nora was surprised to find her famous sibling living in a modest apartment
like “an ordinary housewife”. Whilst there, Nora’s husband Fedor had a heart
attack and, although Rand paid for his hospital stay, she refused to visit him.
Inevitably
bitter, Nora describes her chain smoking, pill-popping sister as “a sick guru”,
and claims “America ruined her” and “she could have been a better person”.
Eloise suggests after their reunion there was “not much love lost between the
sisters”.
Most
of us know aspects of Rand the writer and/or her work. In Talk to Me the
dramatized recollections and observations of her husband and sister reveal a
woman whose adherence to ‘rational selfishness’ proved painful to those she was
closest to and ultimately caused her own alienation.
BBC Radio 4 November 3, 14:15
BBC Sounds
Originally pulished by Camden New Journal