R.U.R.

R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti / Rossum's Universal Robots), which was written in 1920 by Czech writer Karel Čapek introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole. In the play, however, they are not mechanical devices, but rather artificial biological organisms that may be mistaken for humans. There are descriptions of kneading-troughs for robot skin, great vats for liver and brains, and a factory for producing bones. Nerve fibres, arteries, and intestines are spun on factory bobbins, while the robots themselves are assembled like automobiles. Čapek's robots are living biological beings, but they are still assembled, as opposed to grown or born. In fact, they are closer to the concept of cyborgs - a term that would not be coined until 1960.

A factory makes artificial workers from synthetic organic matter. These 'robots' may be mistaken for humans but have no original thoughts. Though most are content to work for humans, eventually a rebellion causes the extinction of the human race.

The play was translated by English writer Paul Selver and adapted for the British stage in 1922, before debuting in Britain in April 1923. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had broadcast six performances of the play on radio between 1927 and 1935 before bringing an extract of the play to television in 1938. This would be the first ever piece of televised science fiction.

Pictured, back row (L-R): Connaught Stanleigh, Derek Bond, Larry Silverstone; front: Evan John

R.U.R. (TV play, 1938)

35-minute adaptation by producer JAN BUSSELL of a section of the science fiction play by Czech writer Karel Čapek.

This was the first ever piece of televised science fiction; there were two live performances on February 11, 1938, on the BBC Television Service, and no recordings exist.

Bussell adapted and produced the complete play in 1948.

Pictured: a still from the play featuring PATRICK TROUGHTON as "Radius (a robot)"

R.U.R. (TV play, 1948)

A factory makes artificial workers from synthetic organic matter. These 'robots' may be mistaken for humans but have no original thoughts. Though most are content to work for humans, eventually a rebellion causes the extinction of the human race.

An adaptation by producer JAN BUSSELL of the science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti / Rossum's Universal Robots), which was written in 1920 by Czech writer Karel Čapek. The play was translated by English writer Paul Selver and adapted for the British stage in 1922, before debuting in Britain in April 1923.

There were two live performances broadcast on March 4 and March 5, 1948, on the BBC Television Service, and no recordings exist.

A 35-minute adaptation of a section of the play, also by producer JAN BUSSELL, was performed and broadcast in 1938, and was the first ever piece of televised science fiction.

While the play, when written, takes place circa the year 2000, the Radio Times listing says "The action takes place on a remote island between 1980 and 1990."

The production featured a young PATRICK TROUGHTON. According to the Radio Times, this was not his first appearance on television: he was in 1947 productions of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II and William Shakespeare's Hamlet (which also featured PATRICK MacNEE).

Cast

Crew

As the professor's daughter who seeks to discover how the robots are made, and Radius, the 'intelligent robot' who leads the revolt, in Karel Capek's drama, 'R.U.R.'

Radio Times feature

The Shock of R.U.R.

An Introduction to the television revival of Karel Capek's drama of the Revolt of the Robots


IT'S hard to believe that in two or three weeks' time it will be just a quarter of a century since Basil Dean shocked a first night audience at the St. Martin's Theatre with his production of Karel Capek's classic drama of the 'mechanisation of the proletariat.' R.U.R. anticipated Aldous  Huxley's Brave New World; it established Capek's coinage of 'robot'; and it made a nution still recovering from the first World War shudder at the prospect of a paradise-on-earth made possible by mechanical men doing every hand's turn. Not, mark you, mechanical men in the accepted sense, made of pressed steel, jointed with nuts and boits and with photo-electrically operated reactions, but moulded in the true form of man from synthetic protoplasm, with heart, liver, kidneys, and a brain made to order in accordance with the commercial task in hand.

As the general-manager of the R.U.R. factory (Rossum's Universal Robots) explained, immediately they are born-or, rather, manufactured, complete with ready-woven nerves and veins and miles of digestive tubes-they are put to work and "they learn to speak, write, and count. They've astonishing memories, y' know. If you were to read a twenty-volume encyclopaedia to them they'd repeat it with absolute accuracy. But they never think of anything new. Then they're sorted out and distributed-15,000 daily, not counting a regular percentage of defective specimens which are thrown into the stamping-mill... "

No wonder these robots had no souls. They cost £15 apiece-that was in 1923, of course-and had they been used as labour-saving devices to wash up, run errands and make the beds all might have been well; but Mars started his insidious work and first one country and then another ordered job lots of thousands at a time to train as soldiers. They were cheaper than proper soldiers and better, because they didn't think, and they had no souls. Had these armies been made to fight each other, well and good, but experiments were made with super-robots. Robots began to think. Then they began to fight, and Capek, disciple of Wells and adroit preacher of sermons, pointed his moral by making them fight side by side until mankind was annihilated !

They took the precaution of sparing one human being, but they chose the wrong one, because he didn't know the secret of robot-making, and robots, like humans, don't last for ever...

Capek placed R.U.R. in the 1950-60 period, but as that is now so uncomfortably close Jan Bussell, who is reviving it in television this week, is giving us another thirty years' grace. He is also making a number of minor but important changes because of the events of the last twenty-five years. ' Several apparent anachronisms have had to be put right,' he says. "For example, in the original the use of radio is ignored, and certain scenes could not occur in the light of modern science."

In the cast of R.U.R. are quite a number of names familiar to viewers. Pamela Stirling, whom many will remember last year in Victoria Regina, plays the part of a girl who contributes largely to the success of the robots' revolt because of her humanitarian attitude towards them. Patrick Troughton plays the part of Radius, a robot who goes mad but is saved from the stamping-mill through the girl's efforts, only to become the leader of the revolt. The part of the sole human survivor will be taken by John Stuart.

JOHN SWIFT