Afternoon Plays XI
Afternoon Plays XI
Afternoon Play - The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson
******'I'm Tracy Beaker. This is a book all about me. I'd read it if
I were you. It's the most incredible dynamic heart-rending story.
Honest.'
Tracy is ten years old. She lives in a Children's Home but would like
a real home one day, with a real family. Meet Tracy, follow her story
and share her hopes for the future in this beautifully observed,
touching and often very funny tale, all told in Tracy's own words.
Afternoon Plays - London Pride by Adrian Middleton
******On the May 11, 1941, during the Blitz, a high explosive bomb blasted The Admiral Duncan Pub
in Old Compton Street. Then 58 years later, a nail bomb exploded in the same pub, now a popular gay venue.
These historical and bitterly ironic facts - both the work of right wing extremists - provide the backdrop
for this intimate drama about a family in crisis.
This drama deals in an uncompromising way with the topic of HIV & one families stuggle to come to terms
with their son's status, his being gay & his ultimate struggle with the eternal...
Afternoon Play - The Sicilian Fairy and the Irish Giant by Nicholas McInerney
******In 1824, the skeleton of the smallest girl in the world is exhibited beside that of the tallest man.
How did she come to be in the Museum of Anatomy?
Afternoon Play - Swimming Around Ireland by Martin Meenan
******Steven was badly injured in a road accident and his physiotherapy hasn't been going well.
Then his physio comes up with an unusual plan to motivate him.
Afternoon Play - Sunday Morning At the Centre of the World by Louis de Bernieres
******A play set in London on a Sunday morning; a "sound montage". One of the parts consisted
of a group of pigeons which kept repeating "tweet bloody tweet"
Afternoon Play - The Sun At Midnight by Melissa Murray
****** Judy Lewis was a volunteer in a mental hospital on the Isle of Wight.
As she read a poem to a group of patients, one said he was its author.
It was David Gascoyne, poet, the first English surrealist. Gascoyne (played by Struan Rodger)
and she (Emma Gregory) married. Melissa Murray's Afternoon Play tells the story.
At its end, Lewis herself reads the poem he wrote for her, September Sun.
Afternoon Play - Strange Delights by Perry Pontac
******Yet another snotty lady dominates STRANGE DELIGHTS;
but she fails to achieve her repressive ends and unorthodoxy triumphs.
Afternoon Play - Strange Meeting by Peter Wolf
******"This play for Armistice Day is an atmospheric and moving account of the last hours of Wilfred Owen's life.
The sense of despair mingled with cameraderie in the trenches is brilliantly conveyed, particularly by Alex Jennings
as The Captain and Paul Rhys as Owen." - THE TIMES
"This clever, horrifying play by Peter Wolf is inspired by Wilfrid Owen's famous poem Strange Meeting. Superb direction
by Cherry Cookson." - THE EXPRESS
"A lyrical but complex play - with wonderful music by Norbert Zehm." - TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
"...the piece has what are already turning into Wolf's trademarks - a scorching intensity, a lacerating and
uncompromising vision of hell. No feelgood dramatist, he coerces listeners to engage and
lassoes our imagination." - THE GUARDIAN
Afternoon Play - Summer Sectioned by John Binnie
******An elegiac and moving encounter with the woman who was the muse of playwright Tennessee Williams -
his sister Rose.
Afternoon Play - A Summertime by Don Harris
******
Afternoon Play - Straw Without Bricks by E M Delafield
******adapted by Gwyneth Powell. The story of E M Delafield's mission to write a humorous book in 30's RUSSIA.
The highlight of the trip, seen through the eyes of a middle-class ENGLISHwoman, was the time she spent on a
small commune, living and working with the comrades.
Afternoon Play - Steve O' Something by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
******Galen, a talented and successful choreographer, likes order in her life. But then one day
Galen's world is turned upside down. She meets the man of her dreams at a party but when
she starts to ask about him no-one knows who he is. Does this Steve O'Something exist or
is he a phantom? Galen is determined to find out.
Afternoon Play - Stay! by Georgia Pritchett
******Lonely Lizzie runs a dog kennels. Her teenage daughter is aiming for sainthood.
Tim the kennels handyman strives daily to avoid the small calamities that seem to seek him out.
But romance is in the air when the new doctor arrives...
Georgia Pritchett's comedy about a lovelorn mum, her saint-obsessed teenage daughter,
newcomer Dr Perkins and dogs.
Afternoon Play - Stardust - A Love Story by Gwyneth Lewis
******Narrative drama about particle physics by Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis, observing a day in the life
of a young woman who lives in a flat in Cardiff.
As Stella hurtles through her singular day towards the possibility of love, she scarcely dreams
that the journey began nearly 14 million years ago.
Afternoon Play - Someone, Somewhere by Pat Davis
******Pat Davis tells the story of the nine years between 22-year-old Jessie Earl's disappearance in 1980,
and the discovery of her body in dense undergrowth on Beachy Head.
Afternoon Play - Spy Nozy and the Poets by Paul B. Davies
******Suspicious behaviour by new residents in the small Somerset village of Nether Stowey,
leads to the arrival of a Home Office spy, and a memorable encounter immortalised in literary history.
Bill Nighy and Martin Clunes star as the protagonists in a drama where espionage, intrigue
and poetic inspiration, blur the boundaries between truth and fiction. Coleridge is in there somewhere...
Afternoon Play - Somewhere in a Desert by Dominique Sigaud
******This first novel about the Gulf War won six awards in France and is likely
to be acclaimed in the United States. It tells the story of a man who went to war
but lost his taste for it and then, just before the war ended, wandered off into the desert,
where he was killed. The people from the nearby village are all greatly moved by the peace
they see in his eyes and find themselves reviewing their lives. Woven into the tale is an
account of the great love this white man has for his African American wife. The simple
beauty of the prose, set against the callousness of those untouched by the war,
renders this a powerful, haunting piece.
Afternoon Play - Something Memorable by Adam Thorpe
******Adam Thorpe's play imagines the conversation between Thomas Hardy and his first wife, Emma Gifford,
in the 45 minutes before midnight on 31st December 1900. As the new century approaches, the tensions
within their marriage become apparent.
Afternoon Play - So Long Life by Peter Nichols
******A dark comedy. An elderly woman is forced to endure her birthday party surrounded by
her argumentative family. Set in BRISTOL, the play looks at the competing egos in a family
which regularly seems to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons.
Afternoon Play - Snaking Flame by Ajum Malik
******Fahmeeda and her mother-in-law only have two things in common: arrogance and naked ambition.
The collision of personalities can only end in victory or tragedy.
Afternoon Play - Smooth as Chocolate by Susan Stern
******Maria's story is about her passion for old buildings, how she fell in love towards the end of her life
and how she found her voice at last.
Afternoon Play - Smokers by Andy Rashleigh
******Every day on a street in Islington, LONDON, a group of workers meet in the only place they are allowed to smoke.
Afternoon Play - Small Parts by Juliet Ace
******Seduced by the theatre, Mattie joins a repertory company in Wales where she finds
that the quick-change artistry of bit parts is a kind of preparation for life.
Afternoon Play - Sky High by Helen Brandom
******Cissie and Fred, residents on the 15th floor of Crownhill Heights had been looking forward
to their diamond wedding anniversary, until notice came that their block is due for demolition
and that they are due to go into a home. At first it seems that they will go quietly,
but then Cissie has a better idea.
Afternoon Play - Skeggy by Chris Thompson
******A play following the progress of three couples in the holiday resort of Skegness,
each with their own reasons for returning to the scene of their happiest holiday.
Afternoon Play - The Skategrinder by Celia Bryce
******Living in CANADA in the 1930s, ten-year-old Matty watches his immigrant Irish family struggle
with the harsh winter of their new world.
Afternoon Play - The Singing Butler by alexis zegerman & Ron Butlin
******Vettriano's famous image of a man and a woman dancing on a windswept beach while their butler and maid
do their best to shield the pair from the elements, has captured the imagination of the British public. This drama
interweaves the responses of two artists to that painting: dramatist Alexis Zegerman, who tells the story behind
the moment, and Scottish poet Ron Butlin whose poem suggests the process of the artist as he builds the picture.
Afternoon Play - The Singer by Lizzie Nunnery
*******Urban love story with original songs. Frustrated musician Martin is infatuated by the sound of Kirsten
singing from the flat downstairs, and embarks on an affair with the singer and her voice
that threatens everything he has.
Afternoon Play - Silver Street - It's Coming Home by Sonali Bhattacharyya
*******When Mushtaq Jilani buys the local football club for a pound, the grocery king takes a bold step
into an unfamiliar world. Taking on the club's massive debts, and with his family divided, Mushtaq's
first months in the game test more than his bank balance.
Afternoon Play - Signs and Wonders by Frankie Bailey
*******When Guy's wife leaves him, he flees to LONDON where an encounter with an unusual young woman
makes him question his whole life thus far.
Afternoon Play - Signal To Noise by Neil Gaiman
*******The story of a film director who is dying of cancer. His greatest film would have told
the story of a European village as the last hour of 999 AD approached. The villagers feel
Armageddon is imminent. The director works it all out in his head, a film never to be seen.
By no-one but the reader.
Afternoon Play - The Servant's Room by Don Taylor
*******Walls have secrets, and when Adam and Belinda find a small cupboard plastered over in the attic room
of their new house, they discover the story of what happened in the servant's room - or they think they do...
Afternoon Play - Seven Women and The Twelve Pound Look by J M Barrie
******* Seven Women (a light-hearted love story) and The Twelve Pound Look (set
in 1910 but with a continuing contemporary resonance)
Afternoon Play - Seven-thirty for Eight by Steve Brown and Justin Greene
*******
Afternoon Play - The Shell House by Ronald Frame
*******the story of an unusual romance. In 1972, a spinster scientist with private means meets an exiled
Czech architect whose career has stalled. She offers him a commission for a weekend house on some
land she owns on the Suffolk coast. The strange, daring and beautiful building that results will haunt their lives.
Afternoon Play - Showing Up by Georgia Pritchett
*******When Sheila Martin welcomes back into the family the son she gave up for adoption,
she does not guess the home truths his reappearance will uncover..
Afternoon Play - The Secret Place by Clare Bayley.
*******Andy and Safi are getting married, but this is no normal wedding.
There won't even be a wedding night because Andy is serving a life sentence for murder.
Afternoon Play - Lucky Lonnie by Mike Stott
******Lonny is a man who has never done a decent days work in his life - or at least claims not to have.
He would pretend to work, of course, but since his back injury, sustained during a frenzied session of Swedish
speed weeding, life's been a doddle.
Lonny doesn't care for money or status; he is happy to live in his motor home and avoid a hoard of ex wives
and a clutch of children. Everything is lucky for Lonny until he wins £6,000,000 on the National Lottery and
local reporter Kimberley Plumb enters his life. Then his luck turns... Or does it?
Afternoon Play - Little Muspratt by Penelope Mortimer & Caroline Bennett
******
Afternoon Play - The Lost Love of Phoebe Mile by Bernard Kops
******Wartime drama about a young woman working in a London dress factory who falls in love
with an American soldier. The relationship leaves a huge imprint on the woman's life and comes
to the fore again when her lover seeks her out decades after the war is over.
Afternoon Play - Audio Recordings of Human Traffic by Louise Wallinger
******Comedy thriller. Confined to her flat after a skiing accident, Monica listens in to her neighbours' lives.
A local woman has disappeared and Monica begins to suspect that the man above is somehow involved.
When a noise officer from the council turns up, her investigations begin in earnest.
Afternoon Play - Foundling by Nick Warburton.
******A man famous for finding lost people arrives in a small town.
Why will he not help a young woman find her lost child?
Afternoon Play - Kaffir Lilies by Sue Eckstein
******When the dashing young Charles Middleton arrives in Nigeria in 1929,
he strikes up an immediate friendship with Louisa, a married woman.
Afternoon Play - How To Be An Internee With No Previous Experience by Colin Shindler
******based on the controversy that surrounded PG Wodehouse's wartime radio broadcasts from a Nazi internment camp.
Afternoon Play - Wodehouse in Hollywood by PG Wodehouse
******Comedy that tells the story of PG Wodehouse's frustrating experiences in Hollywood.
Afternoon Play - A Soldier's Debt by Nick Warburton
******A missing recording of Macbeth creates a tie between three people in war-torn West Africa.
Powerful drama starring Amanda Root.
Afternoon Play - A Small Good Thing by Raymond Carver
******
Afternoon Play - Abel's Law by Hugh Costello
******based on the story of Abel Ryder, a prosperous Oxfordshire shopkeeper who in 1875
broke the law and refused to have his child vaccinated against smallpox. His stand led
to his arrest, trial and a public uproar that helped change the compulsory vaccination law.
Afternoon Play - Agnes Beaumont by Herself
******A 22 year old Puritan, a friend of John Bunyan, is accused of murder. A true story based on
The Narrative of Mrs. Agnes Beaumont, published in 1674.
Afternoon Play - Alan and Jean's Incredible Journey by Ian Kershaw
******Alan and Jean are on vacation, but this is no ordinary holiday. They are spending it in their bedroom.
Afternoon Play - Alf Said I Was Great by Colin Shindler
******Len Farley didn't quite make Alf Ramsey's 1966 World Cup squad, but is proud of his distinguished league career.
He is less than impressed with today's pampered breed of footballer, including his son Will, who seems more interested
in property development than the beautiful game.