When I added this to my TBR back in 2019, I don’t think I realized that it was written as a play and not a book. Not until I saw it available on Spotify and looked into it a little further did I realize this was how it was meant to be experienced. The Man Born to be King was produced as a full-cast radio play by the BBC during World War II. It is divided into 12 plays, or cycles, depicting the life of Jesus Christ from birth to resurrection. It has a full cast with all of the characters voiced by actors and includes some background noises and music to add to the scene setting.
The story follows the gospel account fairly closely, adding a few extra scenes such as conversations amongst the apostles or debates in the Sanhedrin (the Jewish council). The language used is conversational and casual and the overall effect is certainly one that humanizes the disciples; you get the sense of them as men who worked and travelled together and supported one another but also came from vastly different background and sometimes hoped for different things from Jesus. They feel like real people and their pains and confusions and joys come across remarkably well. The play depicting the death of Jesus was particularly moving, for me especially when Mary the mother of Jesus was present.
As a Christian, I can’t speak to how this cycle of plays would be experienced for someone not as familiar with the gospel, but I found it easy to follow and to keep track of who the characters were. I do wonder if it would be harder to distinguish the 12 apostles if you didn’t already have a background knowledge on them. I expect the original audience probably had a better familiarity than a modern day one would. For example, knowing that John is frequently referred to as “the disciple Jesus loved” helps certain scenes make sense. For me, listening to these plays enabled me to see the pathos and the drama of a story I have heard and read a hundred times before for my whole life. I think even if you just wanted to learn what the story of Jesus’ life is, this could be a great way to do so. If you have faith in Jesus, listening to these plays reminds us that he lived a fully human life.
My biggest stumbling block while listening was actually the voices themselves. Many of the actors (including the actor who voices Jesus) have a very “BBC voice”. Their accents were very noticeable to me and often took me out of the moment. On the one hand, I appreciated that the disciples having various accents demonstrated that they came from varied walks of life. Matthew the tax collector likely would have sounded different from Peter the fisherman. And, of course, the English accents probably weren’t so jarring to the original English audience. But the voices sounded “put on” to me. There’s also one scene where Jesus tells the parable of the shrewd manager – a man who deals deviously with money. And when he speaks the lines of the manager he puts on an accent that I can best describe as a stereotypical Jewish-European accent. Obviously there are layers of problems with this, not least of which that Jesus, as a Jewish man, would not have put on a Jewish accent.
Aside from those complaints, I feel like this is a play that I will return to. My kids listened in on a little of it when they were home from school one day and I could see us listening to it as a family. Maybe the Christmas or Easter stories at the appropriate season.
If you’ve listened to The Man Born to be King, please chime in! I’m really curious about other people’s experience of this.
Karissa Reads Books 
I have a copy of these plays sitting on my shelf and keep meaning to read them, maybe during Holy Week. I love Sayers’ mysteries and what I’ve read of her non-fiction, but I hadn’t realised the audio recordings of these plays were actually available! Clearly that is what I need to do instead of reading them. I’ve just listened to a snippet on Audible, and to me the accents don’t sound put-on, just slightly old-fashioned, so I don’t think that will be a barrier. Obviously the stereotyped Jewish-European accent in the parable of the shrewd manager is more of a problem. Even so, I think I will really enjoy this – thanks for reviewing it as I definitely hadn’t realised they were available!
Call me silly, but I think you’re lucky to discover that it was a full-cast radio play! Those are so wonderful! It’s a lost art form, in my opinion. I remember my husband directing The Moonstone back in college when he was a broadcasting major.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I had to take three bible classes, and it was so bizarre to learn that the life story of Jesus that we see constantly in pop culture is actually spread across different books of the New Testament. It’s not terribly narrative driven, as most of us have come to expect.