Afternoon Plays XXI
Afternoon Plays XXI
Afternoon Play - Stone 1.4 The Deserved Dead by Danny Brocklehurst
******DCI John Stone and his team shake up the Bridgeton Estate when they embark
upon an investigation into the brutal murder of a known sex offender. Stone must act
quickly when he realises that someone is taking it upon themselves to clean up the Estate.
Afternoon Play - Stone 2.4 Collateral Damage by Martin Jameson.
******DCI John Stone is forced to open up an investigation into the death of Gary Taylor,
a veteran of the Iraq War suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The theory that
he died from a self-inflicted drug overdose is turned on it's head when one of his ex-army
mates accuses Gary's grieving widow of having murdered him.
Afternoon Play - Stone 3.4 The Bridge by Cath Staincliffe.
******When university student Matt falls to his death from a railway bridge DCI Stone and his team
embark on a murder investigation. Matt's best friend Liam and ex-girlfriend Holly are distraught.
But when Liam's flat is set on fire and he subsequently goes missing, Stone if forced to consider
whether these events might be linked.
Afternoon Play - Stone 4.4 The Night by James Rye.
******DCI John Stone investigates the sexual assault of the wife of one of his team and uncovers
a dark secret.DI Tanner's wife Karen finds herself in a dodgy hotel after a night out remembering
nothing of the night before; she has been assaulted and Stone suspects she has been given
Rohypnol. I would seem that this is just the beginning of something bigger and as Stone investigates
further he uncovers a dark secret.
Afternoon Play - Owls by Paul Evans
******A fictional story written and narrated by Paul Evans and based on an island legend
about a brother and sister who were bound by a wish sworn on a barn owl feather,
which in turn became a curse that proved fatal. Recorded on location in Scotland;
isolation, human desire and the supernatural are explored in this unsettling drama
about the relationship between hope and desire, Man and Nature.
Afternoon Play - Mandrake by Anita Sullivan
******Irene, an old woman threatens her new neighbour with a scythe
when he suggests cutting down a tree which is on his land.
Irene claims that her husband is buried under the tree- "to cut the branches
would be to cut his limbs." But the tree is around a hundred years old.
Ruth, a social worker is called in to assess Irene's mental health and ability to
look after herself. But as she gets to know Irene she is drawn into a strange and
magical tale that will change her life forever.
Afternoon Play - The Pursuit by Matt Hartley
******When a road accident ends in tragedy, the police officer involved sets out
to discover who was to blame. But is he prepared to accept the findings?
Afternoon Play - Visitors by Peter Tinniswoood
******Peter Tinniswoood's final play, written just before his death in 2003, is an
elegaic drama on the shortness of life and the frailty of love.
Shortly before he died, Peter Tinniswood - one of Radio Drama's iconic dramatists -
wrote Visitors. Set on a misty Thames embankment over the course of several
evenings, the play recounts the meetings of two hospital "visitors", Shacklock and the
much younger Stella, whose relationship - strange, erotic and yet seemingly entirely innocent,
is the bedrock of this hauntingly sad and beautiful drama about the shortness of life and the
frailty of love.
We are in archetypal Tinniswood territory, where nothing is straightforward, where words take
on a surreal existence of their own (the visitors' respective patients live in "Indifferent Ward" and
"Terrified Ward") and where the quiet beauty of much of the descriptions is undercut by recurring
echoes of loss, transience and death. Our two characters' lives, like Vladamir and Estragon, while
providing much humour and no little sexual frisson, are essentially brief and unfulfilling.
Afternoon Play - Till Jihad do us Part by Shai Hussain
******Meena is not an observant Muslim. She enjoys bacon butties, gets a little tipsy from
ime to time and has had her fair share of boyfriends. But she's nearly 30 and the pressure
is on to settle down.
With her mother demanding grandchildren and her younger sister's wedding looming, she
decides it's time to tone down the partying and a find a good steady man. Enter Sarwar,
charming, mysterious, sophisticated and newly arrived from Kashmir.
She falls for him big time and decides he might as well be the one. All marriages are a gamble,
aren't they? Their whirlwind engagement appears to be an unlikely match, but the real surprises
are in store when Meena suspects her new fiance may be a terrorist.
Sarwar is certainly hiding some crucial information about his past but not quite in the way that
Meena imagines. He is using Meena for the sole purpose of gaining a visa, but in spite of his best
efforts, is beginning to fall in love with her.
Can he convince her before his arch enemy arrives to completely upset the wedding plans? No one
is quite who they seem in this comedy! Whatever obstacles lie in the way of Meena and Sarwar's marriage,
much harder to overcome is their fear of trusting each other.
Afternoon Play - Swings and Roundabouts by Dana Fainaru and James O'Neill
*******Comedy drama about first-time parenthood. Abi has been taken hostage -
by her baby. But neither her husband nor the other shell-shocked parents in the
playground seem to have noticed.
Afternoon Play - Maiden's Voyage by Emma Smith
******Dramatised for radio by David Ashton
(writer of the popular Radio 4 detective series McLevy).
First published in 1948, this adaptation of Emma Smith's fictionalised memoir opens
in 1943 and relates the adventures of three eighteen-year-old girls who'd signed on
with the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company to replace workers drafted overseas.
Quite literally thrown in at the deep end Emma, Charity and Nanette embark on their
maiden voyage - carrying steel north by canal from London to Birmingham - surmounting
the dangerous, back-breaking work thanks largely to an endearing mix of youthful bravado
and blissful ignorance. Steering their way through the 'other world' of the boat people,
the girls, often out of their depth, face up to an assortment of challenges with courage and
good cheer.
Afternoon Play - This Repulsive Woman by Christopher Reason
******The first of two linked dramas about a fictional high profile court case.
Deborah Hurst has been tried and convicted of an offence under the Protection
of Children Act 1978. For the general public, hanging would be too good for her.
She is awaiting sentence and is now considered the most notorious woman in the
country. In this real-time drama a probation officer conducts his assessment of
'This Repulsive Woman'.
Debbie is awaiting sentence and is now considered the most notorious woman in the country.
She allowed her daughter Paige to dance semi-naked on the internet for paedophiles. Tony Jukes
(Neil Dudgeon) works as a Probation Officer and is responsible for drawing up a pre-sentence report
for the Court to consider. This real-time drama plays out the meeting between these two characters
as the probation officer conducts his assessment of 'This Repulsive Woman'. For Deborah "It were nowt".
But Tony digs deeper, trying to uncover what caused a mother to commit such an appalling crime.
Is Debbie Hurst depraved or deprived?
Afternoon Play - Every Child Matters by Christopher Reason
*******The second linked drama dealing with the fall out of the case of Debbie Hurst
who was vilified as the most repulsive woman in Britain for allowing her ten year old
daughter to dance semi-naked on the internet for paedophiles. It is six months since
the case exploded on to the red tops and Joanne was the social worker who took the flak.
She feels as though she was hung out to dry and wants to know why.
Six months ago, Joanne found herself at the centre of a major scandal. Her client Debbie Hurst was caught
exhibiting her ten year old daughter over the internet to paedophiles. Joanne was suspended on full pay,
pending a disciplinary tribunal.
But then worse, much worse, her name and identity were leaked to the press and she found herself in
tabloid hell. Today, the client is back in court for sentencing. Word has it she'll get at least eight years.
Meanwhile, Joanne has been secretly fed information that the client's children are to be fostered out to
their grandfather. So despite the injunction that she contact no colleagues whilst suspended, Joanne has
persuaded David to meet her in secret.
Afternoon Play - Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Exupery
******The autobiographical tale of Antoine de Exupery's plane crash in the
Libyan desert in 1936 and his miraculous survival.
When Antoine de Saint-Exuperyand his co-pilot Prevot crash in the
Libyan Desert while attempting to break the record for the Paris-Saigon
flight in 1936 the odds are stacked against them. Miraculously they survive
the impact - and while the plane doesn't catch fire or explode the fuel and water
tanks are ruptured and supplies are only minimal. With only half a litre of coffee,
a little white wine, a few grapes and an orange they only know they are stranded
somewhere in a square of inhospitable desert whose sides measure 400km.
The days are scorching and the nights freezing. Their signal fires go unnoticed. Their forays
to find help are fruitless and increasingly desperate. Physically weak, they become prone to
hallucinations. Mirages appear on their horizons. Life is tested to its limits and the increasingly
debilitated dialogue between Exupery and Prevot is accompanied by Exupery's inner thoughts
and meditations on their situation. This not only describes their physical journey but, in Exupery's
characteristic fashion, takes us on a journey that deals with previous flying expeditions and his
very detailed view of the insights flying, particularly in the very basic sort of aircraft he flew, gives
to our perception of our relationship with the planet. Although written 70 years ago the story still
has relevant messages for us today in the context of our increased awareness of globalisation
and climate change.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a larger-than-life character. Born into an aristocratic French family
in 1900, flying and writing were his two passions. In 1926 he joined the airline Latecoere, later to
become Aeropostale, as one of its pioneering aviators, charged with opening mail routes to remote
African colonies and to South America with primitive planes and in dangerous conditions. His career
was punctuated by scrapes and near-fatal crashes - WIND, SAND AND STARS charting one of these.
Exiled to America after the French surrender in 1940 he wrote the classic children's tale THE LITTLE PRINCE
and the novel FLIGHT TO ARRAS, the latter charting his war experiences as a reconnaissance pilot and which
headed the US best seller list for 6 months in 1942. Having persuaded Allied Commanders to let him fly again
he disappeared over the Mediterranean in July 1944 presumed shot down by a German fighter.
Afternoon Play - My Own Private Gondolier by Bethan Roberts
******In Bethan Roberts' first play for radio, Peggy Guggenheim's troubled daughter, Pegeen,
leaves her three children behind when she travels to Venice to spend the summer with
her mother. Pegeen is in retreat from a marriage that has failed. She is determined to be
an artist, and she shuts herself up in the dank basement, trying to paint.
Meanwhile, her mother, Peggy, is much more concerned with the English sculptor who
has come to visit; she wants a piece of his work to add to her collection and will use
everything at her disposal to achieve her aim. She'll even try to inveigle her daughter
into the plan if she thinks it will get her what she wants. Peggy is well known as a collector
of men, as well as art. As the summer progresses, and the strains between mother and daughter
grow, it's only Gianni, Peggy's personal Gondolier, who can provide a welcome diversion.
Afternoon Play - Ivan and the Dogs by Hattie Naylor
******Based on the extraordinary true story of a boy adopted by a
pack of wild dogs on the streets of Moscow.
Of all the stories that came out of Russia during perestroika this is one
of the strangest. Ivan Mishukov walked out of his drunken, arguing parents
flat aged 4 and went to live on the streets of Moscow. There he was adopted
by a pack of wild dogs and with them he spent two winters on the streets.
When the play begins Ivan is now 11 and has never told anyone of his time
with the dogs until one night his foster mother promises another
dog if he will tell his story.
The story takes us though the backstreets of Moscow at a time when the idea of life itself was
being devalued and where we meet glue-sniffing children who fight for their territory in
underground sewers and drunks who will freeze to death in the winter. Amidst this human
catastrophe Ivan learns that only his dogs can really be trusted and embarks on an extraordinary
relationship of mutual need.
Afternoon Play - The Road Wife by Eoin McNamee
******Edward Coyle is a truck driver. Delivering a cargo of fish on a new route in Ireland
he comes across a woman who lives her life, and makes her living on the road, moving
from one truck to another. The Road Wife.
Driving into town with his delivery Coyle gives a lift to a female Asian hitchhiker but soon discovers
she is more of a passenger than he bargained for, especially when his truck is stopped by immigration
officers and he and his illegal occupant are taken in for questioning.
Finding himself implicated in her case Coyle soon discovers that his own past is returning to haunt him.
But what is it Coyle is trying to forget?
In a world where people are forced to hide their identities, everyone has secrets, even the immigration
workers themselves. The story of one woman who forces a community to look at their mistakes, examine
their consciences, and asks is it ever possible to escape or outrun your past?
Afternoon Play - The Climb by Andrea Earl,
******A feel good drama about three men who venture on a climb of their lives.
Ropes, crampons, grappling irons at the ready; D-day has arrived. Frankie, John and Bud
are ready, well as ready as they'll ever be . But this is not a mountain, nor a great hill they
are preparing to climb tonight - it's Blackpool Tower. Furthermore, Frankie has Down's
syndrome, John is blind and Bud is only 3'6". It was Frankie's idea as he wants to follow
in the footsteps of his hero Sherpa Tenzing. The men are forced to pull together as a team
in a race against time in an attempt to reach the top as the police try to intercept their highly
dangerous (and highly illegal!) deed.
Afternoon Play - Severed Threads 1.3 by John Dryden - God's Clothing Firm
Afternoon Play - Severed Threads 2.3 - If Thy Hand Offend Thee
Afternoon Play - Severed Threads 3.3 - The Reckoning
******Jim Nostrand, proprietor of Cheap Threads, a church-owned clothing firm in Minnesota,
becomes the scapegoat when news-reports implicate the company in a child-labour scandal.
Four thousand miles away, in a boarding school in the British countryside, troubled
twelve-year-old loner Ben, seems obsessed with school-shootings and vengeance.
In India, British/Asian journalist Prem Sharma is making a radio documentary for the BBC
about children working in factories. But after rescuing a young boy and taking him back
to his village, the reception he gets there is not what he expected.
Over three episodes, these three stories interweave and revolve around each other revealing
connections and layers as they build to one climatic resolution.
Afternoon Play - Setting a Glass by Nick Warburton
******A man is summoned to a hospital where his elderly mother is fading away. He arrives in the middle
of the night and walks through empty corridors looking for a coffee machine. So why is he avoiding
sitting at his mother's bedside?
He gets talking to an auxiliary nurse a disgruntled but determined young woman whose life is starting,
just as his mother's is ending. As he tells this complete stranger about his mother's uneventful life,
her small achievements, he comes to understand some of the mechanisms at play in his strange inability to sit with her.
Afternoon Play - Boniface and Me by Gillian Plowman
******A recently divorced woman begins to write to an African child she met on a trip to Zimbabwe.
Soon, she is corresponding with several children and their grateful headmaster.
In a series of beautifully observed and accurately captured letters, she finds more love, support and
wisdom from their friendship than she does from her own materialistic and egregious offspring.
Afternoon Play - Gracey and Me by Gillian Plowman
******Kate returns to South Africa to meet Gracey, the woman she betrayed twenty-five years ago
when she was a ten year old staying with her godparents in a luxury suburb of Johannesburg
during the height of apartheid.
The repercussions of that betrayal have profoundly affected both women, psychologically and physically.
The play takes Kate on a journey into her past. She has hired a private detective to track down
Gracey who she betrayed as a child. He meets her in Johannesburg and they set out to find her.
On the way Kate remembers two hugely dramatic moments of her betrayal and Gracey's punishment.
Beauty was the daughter of the housemaid, Gracey, who has illegally secreted her into the hut in the
garden where she lives. The two children are swimming together when their play gets out of hand,
Kate tells Beauty she has made the water dirty because she is black. The altercation between the two
children escalates and the horrific scene becomes a metaphor for the apartheid era as Kate plays out
what she has observed of the treatment of black people by white people making her drink the dog's
water from a bowl on the floor.
Gracey discovers them and unleashes the untold anger of her life upon Kate. Kate retaliates by telling
their secret to her Godparents which results in Gracey and her daughter being banished. This haunts
Kate as an adult but when she finally confronts her past events unfold which threaten her life, as the
play reveals the brutality of the legacy left by apartheid.
Afternoon Play - Miss St Andrews by Mike Bartlett
******Old grudges resurface as Miss St Andrews 1961 meets her old rival for the university
Charities Queen title nearly 50 years later.
Afternoon Play - The Thali Revolution by Bettina Gracias
******Bettina Gracias's play The Thali Revolution focuses on India in the late 1970s.
The local women are finding it harder and harder to feed their families. The country
is rife with food shortages, financial difficulty and civil unrest. Young mother, Gurinder,
is desperate to provide for her children and argues nightly with her husband who is unable
to find work. Taking a stand against the government feels like the only option open to her.
Gurinder decides to stand outside her house banging her thali dish in protest and before long,
all the women in her village are doing the same.
Meanwhile, the leader of the country, Indira Gandhi, is getting more and more desperate too: she's
losing support within congress, wondering how she can win back her opposition and her country's
support. She's beginning to hear thali tins banging in her head at night.
Afternoon Play - The Trenches Trip by Jonathan Smith
******In Jonathan Smith's new play unexpected conflicts emerge within a group of teachers
and sixth-formers as they walk through the WWI trenches, tunnels and cemeteries of Flanders,
trying to step into the boots of those who died there.
Afternoon Play - The Man Who Jumped From Space by Andy Walker.
******The real life story of Captain Joe Kittinger and Project Excelsior.
As jet planes flew higher and faster in the 1950s, the USAF became
increasingly worried about the safety of flight crew who had to eject
at high altitude. So Project Excelsior was initiated to perfect a parachute
system that would allow a safe, controlled descent after a high-altitude ejection.
Project Excelsior was initiated in 1958 to design a parachute system that would allow a safe,
controlled descent after a high-altitude ejection. Francis Beaupre, a technician at Wright Field,
Ohio (today Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), devised a multi-stage parachute system to
facilitate manned tests.
To test the parachute system, staff at Wright Field built a 200 ft (61 m) high helium balloon with
a capacity of nearly 3 million cubic feet (85,000 m³) that could lift an open gondola and test pilot
into the stratosphere. Joe Kittinger, who was test director for the project, made three ascents and
test jumps. This is the story of the three jumps.
The first test, Excelsior I, was made on November 16, 1959. Kittinger ascended in the gondola and
jumped from an altitude of 23,300 m (76,400 ft).In this first test, the stabilizer parachute was deployed
too soon, catching Kittinger around the neck and causing him to spin at 120 revolutions per minute.
This caused Kittinger to lose consciousness, but his life was saved by his main parachute which opened
automatically at a height of 3,000 m (10,000 ft).
Despite this near-disaster on the first test, Kittinger went ahead with another test only three weeks later.
The second test, Excelsior II, was made on December 11, 1959. This time, Kittinger jumped from an altitude
of 22,800 m (74,700 ft) and descended in free-fall for 17,000 m (55,000 ft) before opening his main parachute.
The third and final test, Excelsior III, was made on August 16, 1960. During the ascent, the pressure seal in
Kittinger's right glove failed, and he began to experience severe pain in his right hand from the encroaching
effects of frostbite. He decided not to inform the ground crew about this, in case they should decide to abort
the test. Despite temporarily losing the use of his right hand, he continued with the ascent, climbing to an
altitude of 31,333 m (102,800 ft). The ascent took one hour and 31 minutes and broke the previous manned
balloon altitude record of 30,942 m (101,516 ft), which was set by Major David Simons as part of Project Man
High in 1957. Kittinger stayed at peak altitude for 12 minutes, waiting for the balloon to drift over the landing
target area. He then stepped out of the gondola to begin his descent.
The small stabilizer parachute deployed successfully and Kittinger fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds, setting a
still-standing world record for the longest parachute free-fall.
Afternoon Play - Women of an Uncertain Age by Rony Robinson and Sally Goldsmith
******When a mutual friend dies, Clare, Heather and Kat throw caution to the winds and pursue what they
really want in their middle age, as opposed to what they think they should want. A funny, touching play
about what it is really like to survive the menopause.
Afternoon Play - Children in Need Everything by Oliver Emanuel
******One of two special Radio 4 Afternoon Plays, commissioned with BBC Children
in Need, 'Everything' tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl who spends 7 days
in a refuge for runaways. Girl is played by young actress Natasha Watson who is
currently starring in BBC1's 'Single Father' with David Tennant,
and will be appearing in 'Donkeys', the sequel to 'Red Road'
with Kate Dickie and Martin Compston.
Earlier this year, playwright Oliver Emanuel worked with ROC - Running Other Choices, part of the
Aberlour Child Care Trust, a 'Children in Need' supported project. Under Scottish law, any young
person under the age of sixteen is allowed to stay in ROC's refuge for up to seven days without
parental notification. This is one of only two refuges for runaways in the UK. Oliver worked with
young people who had either been involved with ROC in the past or were currently staying at the
refuge. In July 2010, the group spent a week at Pacific Quay (BBC Scotland) writing, acting, playing
games and talking about what it means to be a runaway. Informed by this experience,
Oliver wrote 'Everything'.
Oliver Emanuel:
'On the last day of the workshop, I quizzed each of the young people about their experiences and what they
felt about their lives. My last question was what would they want if they could have anything in the world.
One girl said she wanted a big house. Another boy said he wanted a boat for him and his mates to hang out.
Someone else said they wanted their mum and dad to get back together again. When I asked the last and
youngest of the group he didn't know what to say. He just shrugged. I asked him to think about it and he
eventually said 'Everything. I just kind of want everything'.
Afternoon Play - Children in Need All the Blood in My Veins by Katie Hims
******One of two special Radio 4 Afternoon Plays, commissioned with BBC Children in Need.
Earlier this year, award-winning playwright Katie Hims worked with Carers Lewisham, a 'Children in Need'-
supported project, to create the story of Viola, a fourteen year old girl, with responsibilities beyond her age.
The play was then recorded with a mix of professional cast and the carers themselves.
Afternoon Play - Chatterton The Allington Solution by Peter Ackroyd.
******Who or what killed the boy genius Thomas Chatterton?
For over two hundred years, everyone thought he committed suicide, a neglected poet
driven to despair. Everyone, that is, except Jeremy Allington, a literary historian, who
thinks the prevailing wisdom is nonsense. Only he isn't quite as polite as that ...
Dangerously close to losing his job and his partner, Allington is determined to prove
that history is not as simple as some historians would have us believe. Set in both the
present day and the 18th century, Chatterton: The Allington Solution is the first play for
Radio 4 by the acclaimed writer, biographer and historian, Peter Ackroyd.
Afternoon Play - Tales 1.6 by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Afternoon Play - Tales 2.6
Afternoon Play - Tales 3.6
Afternoon Play - Tales 4.6
Afternoon Play - Tales 5.6
Afternoon Play - Tales 6.6
******
Afternoon Play - Talking to Sticky
******
Afternoon Play - Gunshot Wedding by Katie Hims
******Aidan, 14, tells us the story of Leila Jones, the skinny girl from across the road.
Her mum's fallen for a cowboy at line-dancing, except he's really a telephone engineer.
Then she finds a gun in her brother's bedroom.
Afternoon Play - Greater Good by Justin Hopper.
******It is 1915 and the celebrated German chemist Fritz Haber turns to developing poison gas
as a weapon for the German military. His wife and former colleague Clara is appalled
and sets about trying to stop him.
Afternoon Play - Gilda and Her Daughters by Carine Adler
******Comedy drama by Carine Adler about a mother and her three daughters who gather
at their family home after the death of the father. A compelling and comic story about
sibling rivalry, maternal love and lies, and the illusiveness of 'truth'.
Afternoon Play - Get Stuffed, the Farcical Life of Georges Feydeau by Natalia Power
******Georges Feydeau's farces were grounded in his parents', and later his own, bitter marriage.
The worse domestic life got, the funnier the plots became.
Afternoon Play - The Giant's Cause by David Rudkin
******Modern telling of the Ulster folk-tale about
Finn MacCoul and the Giant's Causeway.
Afternoon Play - The Great Smog by Jerome Vincent
******set in London in December 1952, when the worst smog in living memory brought the city to a standstill.
It is estimated that there were 3,000 extra deaths as a result of it; eleven cattle died at the Smithfield show by
breathing in fumes; there were more burglaries, and the buses and tubes ran a very restricted service. Theatre
performances and concerts were abandoned, sometimes during the performance, as audience and singers had
coughing fits. The Great Smog consisted of three short cameos; a girl turned down by her boyfriend; a pickpocket
who robs a blind man, and two burglars who take their victim to hospital when they realise he is choking to death.
Afternoon Play - Gabriel's Ashes by Chris O'Connell
******Griff has the gift of persuasion, while Gerry has nothing but a passion for musicals and a talent for guessing.
Soon Griff has Gerry hooked, dreaming of the big time, stuck in Lewisham.
Only when it is too late does Gerry see the danger.
Afternoon Play - Gant and McCulley by Gerry McGee
******
Afternoon Play - God In A Box
******
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