Afternoon Plays XII
Afternoon Play - Always on My Mind by Carolyn Bonnyman ******After his death, Jennifer discovers her husband was twice the man she thought, ... in a dark comedy about grief, love and Elvis. Afternoon Play - An Unchoreographed World by Frances Byrnes ******Frances Byrnes's play explores a dramatic formative event in the life of the young dancer Margot Fonteyn in May 1940. Fonteyn is trapped in Holland during the German invasion with her lover Constant Lambert and the fledgling Sadler's Wells Ballet. Her life threatened, the dancer discovers who she really is and what her destiny might cost her. Afternoon Play - The Architects by Chris Dunkley ******Howard is coming to the end of an unremarkable career. Then he meets Pat, who has decided that things have to change. Afternoon Play - Away Day by DJ Britton ******At a regional airport somewhere in England, the ground services team are in disarray. So the boss decides it is time for a make-or-break away day. Afternoon Play - The Decoy by Matthew Broughton ******A Thriller. Daniel is plucked from the factory floor and groomed by the state as a body-double. Afternoon Play - Filthy Rich by Michael Butt ******Black comedy. Max is set to inherit a small fortune when he turns 25, but standing between him and the money is his sister Katrin. And then there's the grandmother. It's dog-eat-dog on the mean streets of Weston-super-Mare. Afternoon Play - Life Complicated - Status Pending by Marcy Kahan. ******Unable to get jobs, five recent graduates each invent their own imaginative and challenging three-week project. As the schemes unfold, they are each forced to confront what they really want from life. Afternoon Play - Those Hard to Reach Places by Daniel Thurman. ******'A comedy. Cleaner...only dirtier' is a slogan unlikely to be used by your average domestic cleaner. But Rita is anything but your average domestic cleaner, as an unfortunate former mayor is about to discover. Afternoon Play - If You're Glad, I'll Be Frank by Tom Stoppard ******'TIM' the talking telephone clock can think as well as speak and pip the seconds. She becomes disillusioned by the tyranny of time. Frank recognises in her voice the wife he loves. (8-Feb-1966). Afternoon Play - The Island With No Name by Allison Joseph ******Hebridean island life isn't for everyone, yet when Kathleen decides to sell her family's croft and head to Glasgow, her friends are appalled. Her decision becomes a catalyst that causes people in the small community to re-examine their heart's desires. Afternoon Play - Legacy by Cath Staincliffe ******Probate detectives Rachel and Dan race to find the rightful heirs to an unclaimed estate and get a slice of the fortune. Afternoon Play - Lifeline by PG Morgan. ******Three people fly to Bangkok on an all-expenses paid trip to test a new asthma treatment. Nick is an actor whose last big job was in a recently-axed soap, Lynne needs to pay back debts caused by her secret addiction and Rob is a drugs trial veteran with a family to support. But when the injections begin, everything starts to unravel.
Afternoon Play - Ivan and the Dogs by Hattie Naylor
******The extraordinary true story of Ivan Mishukov, who walked out of his
Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city
streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
Afternoon Play - My Year Off by Robert McCrum
******Dramatisation of the writer and war reporter Robert McCrum's intimate account of his
recovery from a stroke, suffered in 1995 at the age of just 42.
Afternoon Play - Mole by Richard Monks
******Comic tale of an amateur gardener who becomes dangerously obsessed with hunting down the mole
that has dared to desecrate his pristine lawn. But his obsession hides a deeper and more damaging problem.
Afternoon Play - My Sky Blue Trades by Gerry McKee
******
Afternoon Play - My Name Is Iqbal Masih by Bettina Gracias.
******The moving true story of Iqbal Masih, a young Pakistani boy who was forced into bonded labour
in a carpet factory at the age of four, an international figurehead for the Bonded Liberation Front
at the age of 11 and brutally murdered in 1995 at the age of 12.
Afternoon Play - My Mother and Other Strange Creatures by by Claire Bennett
******Millie, a bright teenager, has an eccentric mother, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on the circumstances.
Afternoon Play - Making Waves by Sol B. River & Gee Williams
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Afternoon Play - Matinée Performance by Deborah Cook
******
Afternoon Play - Me and My Man by Bettina Gracias
******Comedy. Odd couple Lal and Paul run their own dry-cleaning shop. The path to true love is littered with obstacles
including age difference, guilt, cultural chasms and etymology.
Afternoon Play - Matthew, Mark, Luke And Rachel by by Jeremy Thomas
******A comedy drama about two very different middle-aged men trying to bring up their
teenage children in the same household.
Afternoon Play - The Moderniser by Steve Roberts
******When a journalist attempts to uncover the truth about a missing MEP, she encounters obsession and madness.
Afternoon Play - Michael by William Wordsworth
******Additional scenes by Nell Leyshon. Tom Courtenay reads Wordsworth's narrative poem Michael - the first in which
he poeticised the language of ordinary men, telling the story of the Cumbrian sheep farmer Michael
and his son Luke who has to leave the farm .
Afternoon Play - Michael and Me by David Eldridge
******
Afternoon Play - Michelangelo's David by Susan Marlin
******
Afternoon Play - The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl
******A satire on consumerism, set in a future that is bright for most of society with robot labour
doing the all the work and free energy is available for everyone. Now with a never ending supply
of robot-made goods there are more items available than people can possibly consume. However
there is the beginings a growing discontentment amongst a certain group of the population who
oppose the government. Morrey Anderson, a radio economist is one such person who is finding
life difficult. He works one and a half day week and judged to be a class 7 person entitled to consume
beyond is capability. When his boss demands greater consumption from him
he decides now is the time to act and join the revolution.
Afternoon Play - The Mind's Eye by Jill Hyam
******
Afternoon Play - Modem Gal by Sarah Castleman
******
Afternoon Play - Mother Father Son by Hugo Plowden
******A darkly comic, spooky tale for Halloween, starring Ann Scott-Jones and Peter Kelly
Afternoon Play - Mr Larkin's Awkward Day by Chris Harrald
******One morning in September 1957, Philip Larkin receives a very official looking letter which sends him into a spin.
Afternoon Play - Mr Luby's Fear of Heaven (2008) by John Mortimer
******When Lewis Luby comes around late at night in an Italian hospital, he finds himself lying under the monstrous
big toe of God. Surely some mistake, for Luby, who has never for one moment believed in the immortality of the soul,
cannot possibly be in heaven.
Afternoon Play - Nevermore by Nicholas McInerny
******The story of Gauguin's painting, which was a response
to the death of his baby just days after its birth. He depicted
his teenage wife as a nude Venus in a tropical setting, with a
raven gazing over the scene. With Anton Lesser and Inika Leigh Wright.
The painting is discussed by Prof John House.
Afternoon Play - Vanilla by Lesley Bruce
******Comic fable about food and love stars Derek Jacobi. Wyndham's first love was his mother.
As he fed at her breast, he was set on a path to obsession.
Afternoon Play - Fifteen Ways to Leave Your Lover by Carolyn Scott-Jeffs
******Comedy following the fortunes of a couple who can't live together and can't survive apart.
Afternoon Play - Mr Reliable by Peter Tinniswood
******Mr Openshaw's job is to listen to people, but not to Mrs Flenswick.
Afternoon Play - Mr Lowry's Love by Glyn Hughes
******When the artist L.S.Lowry died 25 years ago, he left nearly all his wealth and many paintings
to a young unrelated woman who happened to share his surname. At the age of 14, Carol Ann Lowry
wrote to Lowry, asking for advice on her own artistic career. Lowry responded by paying for her
education and helping her through art school, and the two became lifelong friends. In this brilliant
play we discover that Carol wasn't the only young woman with whom Lowry had a platonic relationship.
Sophie Heath, Evening Standard
............This play attracted interest and favourable reviews in many national papers, including the
Daily Express and the Sunday Times. Radio Times added the following: "Lowry had a strange inner world,
full of secrets", says author Glyn Hughes. His drama opens with the discovery of disturbing puppet-like
figures after Lowry's death 25 years ago. "Those very brutal pictures were never displayed.
There was something unwholesome in Lowry's head".
"Lowry was a lonely man who had a succession of close friendships with young women.
I have written about three - one invented, two real. I watched one woman I knew fall under his spell."
Hughes also knew Lowry by sight. "There was nothing sexual about his friendships", he says.
"He was in love with a childhood image".
Afternoon Play - Mrs Mabb by Susanna Clarke
******Susanna Clarke's story, dramatised by Judith Adams. Handsome Captain Fox has been spirited away
by the amazing Mrs Mabb, and audacious heroine Venetia wants him back.
Afternoon Play - Mustard Seed by by Nick Warburton
******A traveller passing through a remote village receives a desperate request from a mother to cure her son.
Afternoon Play - My Computer Told Me To Do It by Jim Poyser
******Harry buys a new virtual reality computer game which allows him to play out his fantasies on screen.
The trouble is, after a while he starts playing them out off screen as well. Will his dull, predictable old life survive?
Or will he run off to Vegas with a load of dancing girls?
Afternoon Play - Baby First by Steve May
******Michael is an evolutionary biologist who has written books on the reproduction imperative. But when he becomes
a father he has to try out his theories in real life. Humorously illustrates what we all know: those with the biggest brains
often have the least sense.
Afternoon Play - Bad Faith by Peter Jukes
******As a police chaplain, it is Jake Thorne's job to offer counselling and comfort to officers in trouble,
victims and young offenders.
But Jake has lost his faith.
Afternoon Play - Baguettes and Barms by Christine Marshall.
******Anne has just started as a volunteer at a shelter for the homeless.
She is also organising a big party for her husband.
Afternoon Play - Barnes and Molly by Ray Brown
******Love and mathematics combine in this true-life story of a secret romance between Barnes Wallis,
inventor of the bouncing bomb, and his 17-year-old cousin.
Afternoon Play - Be My Baby by Amanda Whittington
******This drama-documentary combines the fictional stories of young women who gave up their illegitimate babies
for adoption in the 1960s with the real stories of three adoptees, now in their forties,
who have made contact with their mothers.
Afternoon Play - Before Beeton - The Eliza Acton Story by Jyll Bradley
******Eliza Acton was England's finest cook; Isabella Beeton included over a hundred of Acton's recipes
in her book on household management. Beeton herself had virtually no experience of cooking;
employing someone else to do it. Nevertheless she tried out every recipe in her own household before
deciding whether to print it. The recipes appeared in periodicals published by her husband over a period
of several years. She was the Delia Smith of her day; after her early death, her recipes were collected together
and published in the single volume which is now so well-known, being marketed with tremendous Victorian hype.
Millions of copies were sold, in contrast to the few thousand sold by Eliza Acton of her own book.
Afternoon Play - Beijing's Slowest Elevator by Xiaolu Guo
******Zhang Yan has turned her back on her rural upbringing and is determined to make it in Beijing.
Afternoon Play - Beirut Days by Kris Kenway
******A day in the life of the enigmatic city where east meets west.
For three lost souls, this is the day when everything changes.
Afternoon Play - My Dad Knows by Gary Brown
******A fast-paced comedy about football, sex and sacred Jewish scriptures, with some double-dealing thrown in.
As Mark prepares for his bar mitzvah in 1973 he starts to realise that his father has a dark secret.
Afternoon Play - The Tony Kay Scandal by Michael McLean
******The true story of the case of footballer Tony Kay, who, in 1965, was convicted of match fixing, sent to prison
and banned for life by the FA. The play follows the course of events leading up to Kay's trial, imprisonment and release,
and features recently-recorded observations from Kay himself.