Marvin Gaye was an iconic musician who found a new kind of fame in death when he was murdered by his own father. Caryl Phillips's drama imagines the conflicting forces in Gaye's life that formed him and failed him. The story focuses on the final years when he was offered a lifeline in the unlikely setting of Belgium's Ostend where he would compose Sexual Healing.
At his creative best, Marvin Gaye wrote songs that revealed his personal sensitivities and yet as a performer and a star he was happy to strut around like a macho love machine, conforming to sexual and racial stereotypes. Caryl Phillips's play opens in London, where Gaye is living a seedy, drug-fuelled life in a hotel room. He doesn't know if it's night or day, and he doesn't care. His music has dried up and he can't even go back home to the States because he's wanted by the taxman and an ex-wife. But, as the story develops and he starts afresh with a naive promoter in Ostend, the effect of his father's lifelong rejection of him becomes clear: Gaye has no place that he feels is his home and so he crashes from country to country, looking for a safe place to stay.
A special mention should go to Kerry Shale who plays both Marvin's twisted father and his devoted Belgian promoter- a remarkable example of vocal talent and character interpretation
Type : mpeg 1 layer III
Bitrate : 192
Mode : stereo
Frequency : 48000 Hz
Length : 01:27:32
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Source : Freeview