Afternoon Plays XVIII
Afternoon Plays XVIII
Afternoon Play - No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West
******Edmund Carr is at sea in more ways than one. An eminent journalist and self-made
man, he has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. Leaving his job on
a Fleet Street paper, he takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura,
a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger.
Exhilarated by the distant vista of exotic islands and his conversations with Laura,
Edmund finds himself rethinking all his values. A voyage on many levels, those long
purposeless days at sea find Edumnd relinquishing the past as he discovers the joys
and the pain of a love he is simultaneously determined to conceal.
Afternoon Play - Excluded by Michael Stewart.
******The headmaster of a failing comprehensive is flapping during inspection week. He comes up
with a great idea to hide the problem by getting all the bad pupils out of school and into the dales.
Unfortunately, the teacher he asks to lead the expedition has enough problems of his own.
Afternoon Play - Sargasso by Simon Bovey
******Elver season on the River Severn - a time of mystery and danger. The wrong time and place
for a young man to be searching for his place in the world...
Afternoon Play - Betsy Coleman by Katie Hims
******Betsy Coleman signs up to do memory research for a bit of extra cash, but she finds that her
memories are so vivid that revisiting her past becomes compulsive, particularly when she gets to
spend some virtual time with her late Mother.
Afternoon Play - New Metamorphosis 1.5 Zeus and Semele
Afternoon Play - New Metamorphosis 2.5 Echo and Narcissus
Afternoon Play - New Metamorphosis 3.5 Myrrha
Afternoon Play - New Metamorphosis 4.5 Callisto
Afternoon Play - New Metamorphosis 5.5 Phaethon
******Contemporary reworkings of tales by Ovid
Afternoon Play - Gerontius by Stephen Wyatt
******Destined to be the first English saint for centuries, the great theologian, poet and
Catholic convert Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90) insisted in his will that he was
to be buried in the same grave as fellow convert Fr Ambrose St John, whom he had
known for over thirty years.
Written by award-winning playwright Stephen Wyatt and starring Derek Jacobi as Newman,
this highly-imaginative play explores the relationship between Newman and Ambrose, the
concerns aroused at the time and the controversy surrounding the recent decision to
exhume their bodies. The play also draws on some of the themes in Dream of Gerontius
(music by Edward Elgar).
Afternoon Play - A Chaos of Wealth and Want by Penny Gold
******Henry Mayhew dedicated his life to recording the testimony of the poor and dispossessed
in 1850's London. But he never offered them charity. Until he met Mouse.
The play focuses on an episode in the career of the great chronicler of London life and pioneer
of oral history, Henry Mayhew. In the 1850s, Mayhew spent his days gathering verbatim testimonies
from the city's poor for his 'London Labour and the London Poor'. No moralising do-gooder,
he believed he could talk to such people on equal terms. It took his challenging friendship with Jack,
a sharp-witted teenage coster (market trader) and his over-trusting attempt to assist Mouse, a drunken
child-runaway with a winning smile, to teach him where the borders lie.
At the heart of the story is Mayhew himself: a vigorous, humorous, volatile, improvident, totally engaging,
totally exasperating man. No wonder he sees similarities between himself and the street people he interviews;
no wonder he drives his wife to distraction.
Broadcast as part of the Radio 4 season 'London: Another Country ?', this Afternoon Play is also scheduled
alongside the Afternoon Feature series 'London Street Cries', which sets extracts from Henry Mayhew's
'London Labour and the London Poor' alongside newly recorded interviews.
Afternoon Play - Road Trip by Aisha Khan
******Nasser takes daughter Hana and her children on a surprise holiday. Could this be the trip that saves
a marriage and reunites a family? A heart-warming drama about a dysfunctional family.
Afternoon Play - Number 10 series 3
*******Series of plays by Jonathan Myerson depicting life inside Downing Street.
s03e01 - Be A Good Chap...
After a general election, the Tories have won more seats but Labour got the biggest vote.
Both need help from the Lib Dems, which will come at a cost.
So who will get to form the next government?
s03e02 - And Drugs Won...
In a pact with the Liberal Democrats, Labour have formed a government. But the new Lib Dem
home secretary seems determined to stray off message, and the legalisation of drugs is top of her agenda.
s03e03 - The Visigoths Are Coming...
The Angolan Navy have occupied the British territory of St Helena. After six days, the PM and the
Angolan Ambassador are locked in talks to try to prevent a declaration of war. But who has prompted
this seemingly mad act of aggression?
s03e04 - A Failed State
The coalition is unravelling and, as his team scramble for votes to keep the government in place,
the PM goes to his constituency and becomes embroiled in a housing issue involving a Somalian
single mother. Is it deliberate politics or the last act of a collapsing prime minister?
s03e05 - Immortality at Last
The removal men are in - Adam Armstrong is finally standing down as PM and the new Conservative leader,
Simon Laity, is moving in to Number 10. It seems the whole team will be out of a job - but there is a surprising
last-minute offer from an unexpected quarter.
Afternoon Play - The Understanding by PG Morgan
******In today's award-winning play by P G Morgan, a young woman is urgently
admitted to hospital and prepared to deliver her baby by Caesarian section.
What happens in the next few minutes will test the judgement
- and the understanding - of everyone in the room.
Afternoon Play - Duckie by Roger Williams
******A revisionist play about a little known
WWII incident in which Ivor Novello was
sent to prison for breaking the petrol
rationing regs. He served a month.
A curious footnote is that while in prison
he was befriended by 'Mad' Frankie Fraser.
Afternoon Play - You're Breaking Up by Guy Slater
******How the mobile telephone has modified adulterous
communication, illustrated by three affairs, and
their conclusions.
Afternoon Play - Unseen Austen by Judith French.
******Impertinent young Lydia Bennet discovers that it is her sister Elizabeth who is the heroine
of Pride and Prejudice and that her own love life is all offstage. She sets about putting matters right.
Afternoon Play - Vanquishing the Gorbals by Carmen Walton.
******Semi- autobiographical drama about the author's parents.
When George meets Mags it's in one of the most deprived areas of Europe in the 50's - The Gorbals in GLASGOW.
There's an instant attraction, and despite their surroundings, they make music together.
Later George will give Mags his most treasured possession - a tattered copy of the Communist Manifesto.
But can their ideals and passion survive?
Afternoon Play - Waiting for Concorde by Robert Fannin
******
Afternoon Play - Waiting To Fly by Andrew Holland
******
Afternoon Play - A Broken Nest
Afternoon Play - The Reluctant Millionaire by Wendy Oberman
******Wendy Oberman's The Reluctant Millionaire stars Lizzy McInnerny as
Annie Marriott, a self employed hairdresser, who whilst facing bankruptcy,
finds a winning lottery ticket. She and her husband face an agonizing moral
dilemma, made worse when they discover their newest friend is claiming the
ticket is his.
Afternoon Play - Girl From Mars by Lucy Caldwell
******Eleanor's sister Amy disappeared five years ago. She simply walked out of her house
and into the records of the 'missing'. Lucy Caldwell's play explores her family's attempts
to come to terms with the loss of a daughter and sister.
Afternoon Play - Troll by Ed Harris
******Adult cares mix with childhood fears, in this comic twisted fairytale. In the middle of a
family crisis, Olivia discovers a troll under her mother's kitchen sink. A troll to whom, in the
magic days of childhood, she once promised herself as a meal.
Afternoon Play - The Diabolical Gourmet by Alex Shearer.
******Death by fine dining: the true story of Pere Gourier and his
string of perfectly legal murders in the finest restaurants of 1790s Paris.
Bored with his wife and homelife, the well-off land-owner begins to
amuse himself by taking hard-up acquaintances every day to the best
restaurants in Paris and dining them to death. Everyone knows about it
but - as he isn't doing anything against the law - no one can stop him.
Dealing with a succulent batch of topics - food, wine, fine dining, the effects of over-indulgence,
a loophole in the law and a murderer who can't be stopped - this true story unfolds from the
perspective of Ameline, the executioner's assistant who volunteers to take on the murdering
bon vivant Gourier at his own game in the richest restaurants in Paris.
The intensity and opulence of Gourier's deadly feasts (he would order 15 steaks at a sitting,
trying to kill off his fellow diner) lead to a final dining-room confrontation between him and
Ameline, the table groaning under the weight of course after course of rich, deadly food -
the murder weapon of a rich, deadly gourmet.
Afternoon Play - SE8 by Janice Okoh
******A 17 year old girl is shot in a South London nightclub called SE8.
The club is filled with witnesses. Rita is positive that the police will find
her daughter's murderer but they are met by a wall of silence. Donna, 17,
was there. She saw the shooter. Donna also knows who the gang members
are. She went to school with some of them.
Rita questions her daughter's friends and workers at the club. People are more willing to talk
to a stranger. Donna wants to help but she's frightened. There is a witness protection
programme but it's not 100% guaranteed. Rita persuades Donna to talk. She will be an
anonymous witness in court. Gang members are arrested. But there is an error in disclosure.
Something which may reveal Donna's identity to the defendant. And the night before the trail
Donna goes missing. Will she speak out? Will she survive if she does?
The drama is intercut with recreated interviews with ex-gang members.
SE8 was inspired by the deaths of Birmingham teenagers Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare
in 2003 and Magda Pniewskain 2007. Anonymous witnesses were used to secure both convictions.
Currently a judge can direct the jury to discount anonymous witness statements if, for example,
they have a relationship to the accused e.g,. knew each other at school. SE8 is not only about
individual courage but also about the shaky legal framework that is supposed to protect it.
The writer, Janice Okoh grew up in South London. She has written two plays for Radio 4:
A Short Ride to Dusseldorf and From Lagos with Love.
Afternoon Play - Hive Mind by Simon Bovey
******Spring in 2019 is not the riot of colour it used to be. The honeybee is now
officially extinct. Farmer Sam Clark struggles to raise a crop worth a damn. But
man has adapted. Every spring an army of migrant workers, led by foreman
Amra Walczak, descends on Sam's farm to pollinate by hand. It is a laborious
process but it works. This spring, however, science offers a new solution,
Honeybots, tiny robots that are effectively crawling bees, and Sam's put his
farm forward for a trial.
Once released, thousands of Honeybots course through the fields, pollinating
the flowers in a fraction of the time it takes Amra and her team. Their job done
they return automatically to their hive chest. They are quick and efficient. That evening,
however, dead birds and mice are found in the fields the Honeybots have worked...
Afternoon Play - Gift by Philip Palmer
******To accompany the new series of Radio 4's Inside The Ethics Committee,
this tense drama gets inside the emotional realities of dealing with an ethical
dilemma. Richard has been on haemodialysis for almost three years as a result
of end stage kidney disease, and his son Martin has offered to donate his own
kidney to help his father. But there's more to this gift than either father or son wish to let on.
Afternoon Play - Circus Train by Margarita Sharapova
******While their train is waiting at a remote rural station, animal trainer Orest and his assistant Alex
take the dog out to relieve herself and their long circus train leaves without them. With no papers
or money and not knowing where they are, they embark on a madcap journey, hopping goods
trains and hiding away in carriages. Some are full of contraband, others have stowaways and one
clattering goods train is carrying mysterious chemicals. Alex and Orest encounter a host of eccentric
characters who are finding new and often desperate ways to survive.
As they manically switch trains to try to rejoin the circus, they explore the hinterland of Russia. Life
here has changed since communism and yet in many ways is also much the same. A farm is still very
much a co-operative even though the spokeswoman talks about the new economy and there is a picture
of President Obama on the wall. The drab and ugly towns Orest and Alex pass through rejoice in fictive
names like Yellow Rat Town - this is a heightened picaresque tale where imagination vies with grim reality.
Drunken soldiers, village policemen and a succession of chicken farmers harass and pursue the circus
couple, convinced they are criminals on the run.
Recorded by a Russian-speaking repertory cast.
Afternoon Play - The Target Audience by Igor Simonov
******Glitz and glamour are the trademarks of a hugely successful TV show
where Russia's famous, powerful and rich are interviewed by a trio of canny
and beautiful young women. But tonight's guest, Yuri Tseitlin, is faced with a
dilemma whereby his oil empire may just slip out of his fingers. Before he deals
with his offscreen problems he has some tough questions to answer.
The three interviewers - a young model from the provinces, a political journalist
and a businesswoman - are all driven by the cruelly aspirational culture around them.
They are beginning to enjoy the influence and the recognition that TV offers them.
They were voted into the job by an audience of viewers whose own lives are forever
excluded from the sparkle of Moscow's media, fashion and business worlds. But each
of these young women has her own agenda in the interview with Mr Tseitlin.
In the last of our plays in the 'Russia Actualnyi' series, we get a frontline take on the
world of Russian business as it collides with other more powerful interests. Writer
Igor Simonov has run a number of businesses - he knows and understands the
unspoken rules of commerce and politics in Russia today. The play has been staged
in Moscow's Praktika theatre, a powerhouse of new drama, where it received critical and popular acclaim.
Afternoon Play - The Orchestra by Rosie Boulton.
*******David Adams is halfway through a five year contract as Principal Conductor
of the Philharmonic Orchestra when things start to go wrong. A row with the brass
section leads to a dressing down by the Board. Suddenly David is experiencing a
deep crisis of confidence. How did this happen and will he be able to recover his
self-belief sufficiently to return to the podium and win the orchestra back?
This improvised drama sheds light on the controlled and controlling world of
orchestral life whilst exploring universal themes of leadership, self-belief and job satisfaction.
The intention of this drama is to be as accurate and true to the orchestral experience
as possible and it was conceived using frank and revealing interviews with those currently
working in the orchestral field. Bringing Colin Metters, Head of Conducting at the
Royal Academy of Music into the cast is another means of achieving real insight into
this very particular world.
Afternoon Play - A Bridge to the Stars by Henning Mankell
******Young Joel, living alone with his lonely father, heads out at night in an icy cold Northern Swedish
town to search for a dog he has glimpsed "heading for a star". He finds new friends, cruelty and
a perilous ascent in his winter of discontent and growing up.
Afternoon Play - Humanly Possible by Sarah Daniels
******Alongside the current series of Inside The Ethics Committee, the Afternoon Play
presents the third of three dramas which get inside the emotional realities of dealing
with ethical dilemmas.
Two babies spend the same day on the same Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Their cases
are very different and entirely unrelated. Until the feelings and decisions of one set of
parents begin to irrevocably affect the other.
Afternoon Play - A Helping Hand by Mike Stott.
******A dark comedy by Mike Stott, starring Shobna Gulati and Anne Reid.
A drunken football supporter has been murdered on the Leeds to Manchester train,
and Dave "Fat Boy" Davis is charged with solving the crime. When a strange pink letter
arrives at the station, WPC Djamila Khan is asked to bring in its author, Molly Pickles.
Afternoon Play - Terremoto by Catrin Clarke
******Daniel is a young free runner, who has been all over the world, jumping
across cities everywhere but never really seeing them. His latest goal is to run
solo across the Atacama desert in Northern Chile, a new extreme challenge.
He's earning a huge amount of money by being filmed at the end of his run
drinking a particular extreme sports drink. But he has to get there on a certain
day, and his time is tight.
Ayelen 30 something year old Chilean woman, who has lived in the Uk for most
of her life. She has come home on a family reunion with her mother but has run
out after yet another family row. She has 'borrowed' a run down 4 by 4 from the
garage where her brother works - and she is travelling across the desert alone.
Then all of the sudden the earthquake hits. Ayelen's car is thrown off course, she
is trapped and Daniel, who has seen it all from a nearby ridge, is forced to rescue her.
He is reluctant to break his meticulously planned run - but you can't abandon a human
being in a place like this.
Their subsequent journey across the desert is a life changing experience for both of them.
Afternoon Play - Depth Charge by Fiona Mackie
******Den, a retired submariner, is short on cash and short on dreams
until Joe enters his life and promises him the chance to breathe again.
Afternoon Play - Nature of the Beast by Richard Hurford
******
Afternoon Play - Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel
******A year has passed since the closing of Finbar's Hotel, a down-on-its-heels
hotel on the Dublin quays. Now, with a rock star as its new owner, it has once more
opened its doors-and Finbar's has become an ultra-chic gathering spot. Ladies' Night
at Finbar's Hotel describes one night in its newly illustrious surroundings-a night filled
with adventure and comic romp. In one room a man surreptitiously helps his wife's friend
get pregnant, while next door a businesswoman battles her father. And down the hall, a nun
struggles with the most important mission of her life. A fabulous mix of pathos and high humor,
this is a sardonic tour of the gamut of human experience told by Ireland's
finest modern storytellers.
Afternoon Play - Lady of Kingsland Waste by J Parkes
******magical story of love, death and redemption, recorded on location in Hackney.
Four inner-city children discover the beauty of life when they become strangely involved with a dying woman.
Afternoon Play - A Fire in the West by Michael Butt
******A mother, father, sister and former boyfriend talk directly to mike as each tries to understand
why Cirea burnt herself to death. The style is so intimate and the dialogue so ‘real’ that we wonder
if we’re not listening to a documentary. Then, as the testimonies inter-cut and conflict, we slowly
realise that this is an artfully constructed drama about the impossibility of ultimately understanding
anyone. The technique is similar to a novelist using several narrative voices, but the impact is specifically
radio. It brings the emotions and evasions of the characters right inside our heads.
Afternoon Play - Obstinate Refusal of the Dead to Address Us by Neil Griffiths
******
Afternoon Play - Once A Friend by Stephen Phelps.
******John and Leo, inseparable in childhood, meet for the first time in 30 years.
Will Leo's need to rake over the past prevent them from rekindling their friendship?
Afternoon Play - Saint Lucy
******
Afternoon Play - Say What You Want to Hear 01 - The Startup by Tim Wright
******The plays tell the story of two dotcom entrepreneurs, Erik (Stephen Tompkinson) and
Mike (Ewan Bailey), who set up a website – Say What You Want to Hear – for people to have
their secret thoughts (swywths) recorded. We follow their adventures as they pursue love,
fortune and football stars across Europe.
Afternoon Play - Say What You Want to Hear 02 - The Endgame by Tim Wright
******
The audience was invited to submit their own swywths – on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, You Tube
and the Radio 4 web site. These thoughts were recorded by some well-known Radio 4 voices and
some of them were incorporated into the two plays.
Afternoon Play - Higher - Partners by Joyce Bryant
******The first of two plays chronicling the comic chaos of the Geography department
at Hayborough University - ranked 132nd in the academic league table. When neurotic
and emotionally stunted lecturer David Poll is delegated the task of finding partners in
industry he blunders into a scheme which doesn't quite benefit the department.
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