Threads - Production and Themes

Production and Themes

The attack scenario depicted in the play was largely based on Operation Square Leg, a 1980 home defence exercise to assess the possible effects of a Soviet nuclear attack on Britain. Scientific advisors to the production included Eric Chivian, Michael McElroy, Robert Jay Lifton, Joseph Rotblat, Carl Sagan, Richard P. Turco and Duncan Campbell - who wrote the original scenario, informed by his journalism work at the New Statesman.

Like The War Game, which was made in 1965 and dealt with similar subject matter, Threads mixes conventional narrative with documentary-style text screens and narration, in this case by BBC journalist Paul Vaughan. One of the key elements of the play is that much of the reportage of world events leading up to the war is in the background, with few people paying attention until it becomes clear that war is imminent.

A common theme is the importance of interdependence in society, and how a nuclear war can unravel these connections. The story opens with alternating shots of a spider weaving its web and of power lines running over Sheffield, as the narrator points out how interconnected humans' lives are in modern urban society (thus the title of the play). In the initial salvo of the war we see command and control centres disrupted, followed by the destruction of cities as more missiles hit. Law and order breaks down, then people apparently stop caring for each other, probably due to large-scale posttraumatic stress at what they have endured. Eventually, even language, a fundamental building block of human society, has degenerated.

Threads has been compared to The Day After, a 1983 U.S. television film depicting a similar scenario in the United States. (One review of both productions said, "Threads makes The Day After look like A Day at the Races.")

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