Review:
The Sunday Tribune
7 January 2001
As its title suggests, Roger Gregg's radio drama fantasia Tread
Softly, Bill Lizard is a vastly entertaining satirical romp on all things
Irish. When Bill Lizard, a Chandleresque private dick, is derailed from his
train of thought, he tumbles headlong into the Celtic Imagination, and becomes
an unwilling American tourist wandering through a fertile and frantic world of
social satire, literary parody and slapstick farce... As Bill searches for his
mobile phone to get back to the real world, armed with a map the cloth
of Yeats' He Wishes For The Cloths of Heaven -- and aided by Cyril, a
6ft Pooka in the shape of a rabbit, Gertie, a streetwise punk and Billie, his
feminine side, each of the five episodes charts the various stages of his
journey through the Back Of Beyond -- beginning in Begrudgia, then along the
Stream Of Consciousness...
Writer and director Gregg packs each episode with an
astonishing array of cross cultural and literary references including The
Importance Of Being Earnest, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
Apocalypse Now, Robert DeNiro, Gulliver's Travels, Cyril Cusack,
and Waiting For Godot among many others -- and riffs on a medley of
contemporary socio-political issues (from planning tribunals and environmental
pollution) to create a clever and exuberant comic drama.
