Radio Plays X
Radio Plays X
F:\Radio Plays X
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A Brief Interruption by Ben Steiner
****** A rather neglected, weary and careworn God bemoans
some of the day-to-day frustrations
of being The Supreme Being.
For some time God has been meaning to speak directly to people and
after some trial and error with various knobs he manages to break into
the BBC Afternoon Play where he settles down with a cup of tea to try
and resolve a few things.
His train of thought is interrupted by faxes (which he must not answer, he must not
get directly involved), but one of them catches his eye and before he knows it he is
telling us about what happened to a little girl and her cat that she never let out of her sight.
Ben Steiner’s first play for radio stars Tom Courtenay as God.
Albert's Bridge by Tom Stoppard
******The Tom Stoppard Prize was created in 1983 (in Stockholm,
under the Charter 77 Foundation) and is awarded to authors of Czech origin.
1967: Albert's Bridge, in which Albert finds solace in his never-ending task as a
solitary bridge painter.
Ambushed by Time by Kate O'Reilly
******an extraordinary piece about acute memory damage. Katrin has lost 20 years of memories,
and she cannot remember what happened yesterday; when she looks in the mirror, she screams
in fright every morning as she sees her reflection twenty years older than it should be. Joe,
a married man, has lost his recent memories but the process is slowly removing other memories too.
His wife is dreading the day memories of their marriage disappear.
Amphitryon by Titus Maccius Plautus
******Amphitryon begins with a prologue given by the god Mercury, in which he gives
some background information to the audience. Amphitryon and his slave Sosia have
been away at war and are returning to Thebes. Meanwhile, the god Jupiter is sleeping
with Amphitryon’s wife Alcmena. Jupiter is in the guise of Amphitryon so that Alcmena
is unaware that he is not her husband.
An Audience with Max Wall 1.5 - First Footings
An Audience with Max Wall 2.5 - Foundations of a Wall
An Audience with Max Wall 3.5 - Cracks in the Wall
An Audience with Max Wall 4.5 - Crumbling Wall
An Audience with Max Wall 5.5 - When the Dust Has Settled
******Tony Lidington plays the entertainer Max Wall in this series of shows recorded before an invited audience
at the Concert Artistes' Association in Covent Garden
An Experiment with an Air Pump by Shelagh Stephenson
******The plot takes place in the same house in two different time periods
divided by the gap of two hundred years (1799 and 1999). The play
questions the basic principles of scientific (medical) research, such as the
right of the scientist to cross ethical limits: the right to perform
dissection on the recently deceased (1799) and use of embryos
in stem-cell research (1999).
The Angel of Covent Garden by Colin Bytheway
******Having been hurt too many times, Lee doesn't believe in love. But then he meets an Angel.
Arden of Faversham - anonymous
******Arden of Faversham (original spelling: Arden of Feversham) is an Elizabethan play,
entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on April 3, 1592, and printed later that
same year by Edward White. It depicts the murder of one Thomas Arden by his wife and her lover,
and their subsequent discovery and punishment. The play is notable as perhaps the earliest
surviving example of domestic tragedy, a form of Renaissance play which dramatized recent
and local crimes rather than far-off and historical events. The author is unknown; some have
claimed, on slender evidence, that it was William Shakespeare.
The Ballad of Billy Rainbow 1.2 by Tony Ramsey
The Ballad of Billy Rainbow 2.2
******a comic detective story set in Elizabethan Norfolk. Billy Rainbow is an actor on the London stage,
but because of his indiscretions with a local butcher's wife, is obliged to flee to the country. A series of
misunderstandings force him to masquerade as an unmasker of devils and witches, on a country estate
where there has been an outbreak of Satanism. The hapless Billy was played by Michael Maloney and
Abigail by Daniela Nardini; Janet Whitaker directed.
The Ballad of Shane O'Neill by Robert Millar
Barrel Boy by Angela Turvey
******Shirley has waited 40 years to return to Jamaica. Her son looks forward to her arrival,
but he has changed and so has her home.
Beyond the Thundercloud by Nicola McCartney
******The story of her struggle to negotiate Russian bureaucracy and bring together children from the
Caucasus and central Russia to create plays.
Binge Drunk Britain by Paul Dodgson
******Comedy by Paul Dodgson about three men from Newport who wake up at Severn Bridge Services
face down in bowls of salad. Gradually, the excesses of the night before come back to them.
Blast by Kevin Fegan
******"Blast" is a long dramatic poem set in the declining steel industry of South Yorkshire.
A redundant steelworker recounts "years of dirt and graft, the laughter and the sweat" and explores
the poetry to be found in heavy industry.
Death's Head Berlin by Jack Gerson
Deep Purple 1.2 by Ted Allbeury
Deep Purple 2.2
Devonia 1.3- by Andy Rashleigh - The Beano
Devonia 2.3- Day Trip
Devonia 3.3- Night Boat
******a series of three excellent plays about the life and times of a paddle steamer and its crew,
set in the teens, twenties and thirties. We followed the fortunes of a group of loutish upper-class
students celebrating their degrees; a mysterious group of Germans being ferried across the
Channel during the war, and a works outing in 1911. Crew member Harry was played by
John Duttine and Mercy by Sophie Thompson; Cherry Cookson directed.
Dialogues On A Broken Sphere by Stephen Davis
Dionysos by Andrew Rissik
******with Paul Scofield, Diana Rigg, Toby Stephens.
A strong king who rules by the sword is forced to consider the big questions in Dionysos. An unwelcome visitor,
the charismatic Dionysos, self-proclaimed 'incarnate son of God', argues that 'there is no power or wealth which
will endure: there is only truth. King Pentheus (Toby Stephens) replies angrily: 'What is truth? A word as light as the
feathers of a duck.' The play is loosely based on the story told by Euripides in the Bacchae. When Dionysos arrives
in Thebes he soon has everyone under his spell, including the king's mother Agave (Dame Diana Rigg) and his
grandfather Kadmos (Paul Scofield), but Pentheus is enraged at this decadent new cult and vows to
assert his authority.
This drama is one that has added resonance in the light of recent law and order crises in Iraq.
(Stephanie Billen, The Observer)
Don Quixote 1.2 by by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote 2.2
******Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles
the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote
de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they wend their way
across sixteenth-century Spain. Milan Kundera calls Cervantes "the founder of the
Modern Era and Lionel Trilling "observes that it can be said that all prose fiction is
a variation on the theme of Don Quixote".
Dr Johnson's Dictionary of Crime by David Ashton
******Dr Johnson's Dictionary of Crime: Comic thriller by David Ashton. Samuel Johnson
and James Boswell tackle the teeming London underworld of 1781.
Hopefully, this may well be the start of a new series.
Empty Bed Blues by Stephen Lowe
******Penniless and desperate to find a publisher for his “Lady Chatterley”, D H Lawrence and Frieda turn to a
legendary couple of the American “lost generation”, the drug fuelled poet and publisher Harry Crosby and his
beautiful sculptress wife, Caresse. Their passionate experiment in the total excess of living collides with the
Lawrence’s more painful relationship revealing a major clash of culture, of class and of sexual desire.
Epicoene by Ben Jonson (The Silent Woman) (1959)
******The play takes place in London. Morose, a wealthy old man with an obsessive
hatred of noise, has made plans to disinherit his nephew Dauphine by marrying.
His bride Epicśne is, he thinks, an exceptionally quiet woman; he does not know
that Dauphine has arranged the whole
match for purposes of his own.
Flutterby by Mark Catley
******When Jo decides to kick her heroin habit and improve her run-down,
crime-ridden estate, she has no idea what she is about to unleash.
Fragile by Tena Stivicic
******Fragile" is set in present-day London, mainly in Michi's bar - described as
'one of those underground clubs that hosts people from countries where
non-smokers are not to be trusted' and partly in a refugee hostel run by Gayle,
a New Zealander. We meet Mila, from Croatia, who sings in the bar and is having
an affair with Erik, a damaged but macho Norwegian foreign correspondent who
has seen action in the Bosnia. Marko, from Serbia, has got a job at Michi's
because his father was a big wheel in Serbia, probably caught up in the atrocities.
Glass Houses by Colin Teevan
******Shortlisted for the Tinniswood Award, 2009
I Was Born There by Ellen Dryden
******Judith finds a clumsy little painting of where she used to live as a child...the nightmares begin.
She has to rid herself of the terrible memories associated with that house. Director Ellen Dryden.
With David Suchet, Elizabeth Bell, Leila Hackett, Susan Jameson, John Bennett.
Idylls Of The King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
******Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve
narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892;
Poet Laureate from 1850) which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights,
his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, following the rise and fall
of Arthur and his kingdom. The whole work recounts Arthur's attempt and failure
to lift up mankind and create a perfect kingdom, from his coming to power to his
death at the hands of the traitor Mordred.
In Denial The Story of Paul Blackburn by Kevin Fegan
******The true story of Paul Blackburn, who was convicted for the attempted murder and sexual assault of a
nine-year-old boy when he was just 15. Poet and playwright Kevin Fegan uses poetry and interviews to
give a picture of his past, present and future
Joking Apart by Steven Moffat
******Joking Apart is a BBC television sitcom written by Steven Moffat about
the rise and fall of a relationship. It juxtaposes a couple, Mark (Robert Bathurst)
and Becky (Fiona Gillies), who fall in love and marry, before getting separated
and finally divorced. The twelve episodes, broadcast between 1993 and 1995,
were directed by Bob Spiers and produced by Andre Ptaszynski for independent
production company Pola Jones.
King Trash by Mike Hodges
******'A radio play with great credentials. Written and directed by Mike Hodges, who took the same
credits on the brilliant 1971 crime thriller Get Carter. This is Hodges's re-working of King Lear.
An extremely well-told story of retribution - but not one for the faint-hearted'.
Radio Times
'A filthy, gritty and disturbing piece of work; a modern day Brighton Rock’.
The Guardian
Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont
******"The Knight of the Burning Pestle" is a play written in 1607 by Francis Beaumont,
an English playwright during the reign of James I, and a younger contemporary of
William Shakespeare. The play is a comedy, and much of its humor is farcical.
Martha's Metamorphosis by Frances Byrnes
******Martha used to live for dancing, but due to a devastating illness she now stays indoors
grieving for the body she once had and re-living the medical mistakes that have changed her life.
Memory Experience, Last Loves by Rony Robinson
******From the winners of the Stronger Than Fiction Writing competition, a drama about love
among the elderly in a residential home - inspired by true stories. The play features original songs,
also created from real stories and the words of older people in care.
Paul ...... Richard Wilson
Mo ...... Barbara Marten
Kate ...... June Broughton
Bob ...... Peter Martin
Singers ...... Violetta Hall, Roa Allender, Joan Crookes, Jill Elke, Monica Mellor, Jim Russell and Tony Smith
Music arranged and performed by Val Regan.
Mia and Maya by Charlotte Jones
******Mia and Maia are conjoined twins who long to be separate. As their 21st birthday nears, they approach
a surgeon to take up their challenge.
Miss Marjoribanks 1.4 by Margaret Oliphant
Miss Marjoribanks 2.4
Miss Marjoribanks 3.4
Miss Marjoribanks 4.4
******It follows the exploits of its heroine, Lucilla Marjoribanks, as she
schemes to improve the social life of the provincial English town of
Carlingford.
Returning home to her widowed father Dr Majoribanks, Lucilla soon
launches herself into Carlingford society, aiming to raise the tone with
her select Thursday evening parties.
Money Magic by Judith Johnson
******Comic thriller by Judith Johnson.
A pyramid investment scheme first draws in and then bankrupts the women in one street, setting friend against friend.
Poetry For Beginners by Kathryn Simmonds
******Comedy drama by Kathryn Simmonds. During a residential writing course,
poetry gives rise to lustful urges, ruthless artistic ambition and simmering rivalries.
Pursuits of Darleen Fyles 1.5 by Esther Wilson
Pursuits of Darleen Fyles 2.5
Pursuits of Darleen Fyles 3.5
Pursuits of Darleen Fyles 4.5
Pursuits of Darleen Fyles 5.5
******Esther Wilson's drama is inspired by a true story. Darleen is a young woman with learning difficulties
who has become obsessed with the emergency services and who occasionally sets fire to things.
Helen is a volunteer helper trying to help Darleen to rebuild her life; but she too has her own
secret reasons for volunteering.
Running Away with the Hairdresser by Helen Raynor
******Running Away With The Hairdresser is the story of Caitrin, played by Mali Harries.
Nearly a year has passed since Catrin returned from Thailand after a bomb in a nightclub
killed her boyfriend and brought their holiday to a tragic end. Now she feels trapped in her Welsh village,
but not simply by grief.
Sacred Hearts 01.10 - Novice
Sacred Hearts 02.10 - Songbird
Sacred Hearts 03.10 - Ecstasy
Sacred Hearts 04.10 - Fever
Sacred Hearts 05.10 - Carnival
Sacred Hearts 06.10 - Miracle
Sacred Hearts 07.10 - Penance
Sacred Hearts 08.10 - Termites
Sacred Hearts 09.10 - Letter
Sacred Hearts 10.10 - Living Saint
******Dramatisations of the novels by Sarah Dunant, set in a convent in Renaissance Italy,
where a young woman has been placed against her will.
Santa Catarina, a convent near Venice, is home to over one hundred women in 1567.
But with powerful forces for change raging outside the convent, and with the world of the
women within threatened by a new arrival, passions, hysteria, and conflict will come to threaten their very survival.
Slaughterhouse 30,000 by Mike Walker
******A century after Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle" about the shocking conditions of a slaughterhouse,
things haven't improved. With Oscar de la Fe, Linda larkin, P.J.Brown, Jason Culp, Andrea Marshall Money
and Mike Smith Rivera. Produced by Judith Kampfner.
Sound Barriers by Sarah Daniels
******about a young mother who befriends two of her neighbours and little by little changes their lives.
The story emerges through the thoughts of Jenny, a social worker (Caroline Quentin), Ian, the deaf man
(Steve Day) and an elderly widow (Patricia Routledge). It wasn't really a play at all, but three
skilfully intercut monologues.
Swimming Lessons by Tina Pepler
******based on a sequence of poems in the voices of a mother and her daughter with interlocking drama
Talking to Strangers by Charlotte Jones
******Jake is a very modern kind of person - switched on, yet cut off. He works in IT, emailing colleagues,
texting friends, rarely speaking face to face and never meeting anyone new. One day, jogging past the
ruined pier on Brighton seafront, he has a panic attack as he realises the full awfulness of his isolation.
"I just stand there," he tells us, "and I'm looking at the old pier, or what's left of it, and I think I'm going to cry."
He tells his boss some lie about his mother being ill, and takes a week off work. "Every day," he decides,
"I will go to the beach. I will stand at the West Pier and I will do the thing that I have always found hardest
in my life - I will talk to strangers. I will stand in the sun and the rain and the wind and I will get myself
reconnected to the world. I will not try to pick up women - though God knows I need to."
Find out how well he does, and whether that monkish self-abnegation can be sustained,
in Charlotte Jones's play Talking to Strangers
The Appeal
******Weekly programme highlighting the work of a charity and appealing for donations to support its work
The Apple Cart 1.2 by George Bernard Shaw
The Apple Cart 2.2
*******Many of Shaw's early plays were either banned by the censor or refused production.
He began the practice of writing the challenging, mocking, eloquent prefaces to his plays,
which were sometimes longer than the play itself. In 1925 he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature. The Apple Cart is Shaw's comedic play in which the King
defeats an attempt by his popularly elected Prime Minister to deprive him of the right to
influence public opinion through the press: in short, to reduce him to a cipher.
The Balloonists by Craig Stephens
******Craig Stephens's boisterous comedy about infamous Victorian balloonist Henry Coxwell,
who convinces beleaguered theatre impresario George Hansum to stage his most celebrated flight.
The Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
******Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the
cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after
Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also
reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a
remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes.
The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the
author's own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the
mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered.
Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.
The Card 1.2 by Arnold Bennett
The Card 2.2
******Every town should have a 'card' - someone who gets talked about,
someone who does mad and wonderful things, someone who makes
you laugh. Bursley in the Five Towns has a 'card': Edward Henry Machin
(Denry for short). Denry begins life in a poor little house where the rent is
twenty-three pence a week. But before he's thirty, he's made a lot of money,
and had more adventures than you and I have had hot dinners. The town of
Bursley never stops talking about him. Whatever will young Denry do next?
(Imagine Alec Guiness in the movie)
The Champion by Martin Worth
******Well-researched biographical play by Martin Worth about the life of Dr. W.G.Grace,
the world's most famous cricketer. An interesting comment on the social history of the times ...
Grace was well-paid on the tour, but it wasn't so easy for some of his working-class team mates...
and don't forget that this was when amateurs and professionals entered the ground by different gates.
The Changeling by Thomas Middleton
******The Changeling is a Jacobean tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.
Widely regarded as "among the best" tragedies of the English Renaissance, the play has
accumulated a significant body of critical commentary.
The Conversation by roman halter & trevor friedman
******Dramatic reconstruction of a conversation between Trevor Friedman and Roman Halter,
whose fathers were Jewish slave labourers in Poland and then Germany. Trevor knew almost
nothing of his father's extraordinary story until 24 years after his death.
The Country Wife by William Wycherley (2.5 hrs)
****** "The Country Wife is one of the most frequently read and performed examples
of a type of drama known as Restoration comedy..."
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley.
A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic
and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in
its own time. Even its title contains a lewd pun. It is based on several plays by Moličre,
with added features that 1670s London audiences demanded: colloquial prose
dialogue in place of Moličre's verse, a complicated, fast-paced plot tangle,
and many sex jokes. It turns on two indelicate plot devices: a rake's trick of pretending
impotence in order to safely have clandestine affairs with married women, and the arrival
in London of an inexperienced young "country wife", with her discovery of the joys of town life,
especially the fascinating London men.
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan
******a play about male lovers
The Deep End by Pete Lawson
******. A magical underwater world awaits Leni - if her cry from the depths of the public swimming baths can be heard.
The Dinner Party by Winsome Pinnock
******As the King family settle down to a celebratory dinner party, a stranger arrives with a claim to the family name.
The Drought by Steven Johnson
The Goldilocks Zone by Lucy Catherine
******Lucy Catherine's play is a modern day Brief Encounter showing how when we are lost,
only a true connection with another human being can bring us back to ourselves.
The Good Father by Christian O'Reilly
******It's New Year's Eve and most of the party Guests are in the kitchen admiring photos of each other's babies.
But two lonely strangers find themselves cut off from the rest. Jane was invited because she knows the people
in the kitchen. Tim was invited because he painted the kitchen. Thier lives would have been very different if Jane
hadn't come up to Tim and asked him a question...
this stark and fiercely intimate play by one of Ireland's most exciting new writers Christian O'Reilly is electrifing.
The Imaginary Invalid by Moličre
******A hypochondriac, victimized by pompous physicians, tests the loyalty
of a loving daughter and discovers the contempt of his scheming and greedy
second wife. This classic comedy from one of the most brilliant satirists in the
history of literature deflates the pretensions of society and reveals the
universal frailties of humanity.
The Mother Of... by Georgia Fitch
******Two years ago, 18-year-old Jay became a suicide bomber, killing himself and 25 other people.
Seeking peace, his mother sets out on the road to discover what drove him to it.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
******On an island in the Gulf of Finland, a small girl and her grandmother,
with seventy years between them, argue, dream, and explore together
their island and others of memory and anticipation.
The Trouble with Caves by Ronan Bennett
******A man hears distant voices that appear to be coming from underground, leading him on a journey
into a subterranean world where modern-day cave dwellers teeter on the brink of momentous change
The Windsor Jewels by Robin Glendinning
******Robin Glendinning's black comedy tells the story of a real mystery involving the disappearance
of the Duchess of Windsor's jewels while visiting Britain in 1946.
Unexpected European - various authors
******Six short dramas asking whether an 'average European' exists, from writers in Denmark,
England, Finland, France and Germany. Taking inspiration from the work of Italo Calvino,
who wrote a series of essays called Six Memos For The Next Millennium, the stories are linked
only by their title and the literal and metaphorical theme of rain
Wasted by Shelagh Stephenson
******Martha heads up marketing for an alcopop, aimed unashamedly at the teenage market.
But when the 16-year-old son of her oldest friend is admitted to hospital in an alcoholic coma,
some hard questions have got to be answered.
.
Well by Jane Bodie
******A doctor becomes obsessed with his patient's need to feel well.
You Need Changing by Jackie Pavlenko
******Drama-documentary by Jackie Pavlenko, set in the mother-and-baby unit of a prison.
A woman faces a dilemma when told her child must leave the jail once he reaches six months old.
Lyndsey Marshal stars
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