Radio Plays XIII
Radio Plays XIII
Lament for a Maker 1.3 by Michael Innes
Lament for a Maker 2.3
Lament for a Maker 3.3
******When mad recluse, Ranald Guthrie, the laird of Erchany, falls from the ramparts
of his castle on a wild winter night, Appleby discovers the doom that shrouded his life,
and the grim legends of the bleak and nameless hamlets, in a tale that emanates sheer
terror and suspense.
The Parting by Tanika Gupta
*****The Parting introduces five men on the eve of an elusive journey into the unknown.
Forced to confront their differences and expose their deepest fears before the break of day,
they unravel a truth that will bind them together for eternity.
A Bit of a Hole by Christine Marshall
********Christine Marshall's comic tale about warring neighbours Cissie Weaver and Nora Siddall, who one day are
forced to reconcile their differences when they are left trapped together by the collapse of Nora's floor.
With Tina Gray and Ann Rye
Gesualdo Musician and Murderer by Aled Jones
******Aled Jones examines the bizarre life and tormented music of
Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, who slaughtered his unfaithful wife
and her paramour and then composed six books of madrigals about
the joys of love.
I Will Tell - Children's Diaries of WWII
Keepsake by Dawn Lowe-Watson
Life After Scandal by Robin Soans
******Life After Scandal takes you behind the closed curtains and beyond the reach of the telephoto lenses to explore
our paparazzi-infested world from the other side, as those implicated in some of the most notorious scandals of recent
years talk frankly about the events which transformed their lives. This new verbatim play from the writer of
Talking To Terrorists and The Arab-Israeli Cookbook uses the subjects' own words to take an entertaining,
compassionate and deeply moving look at the different people, from scorned politicians to powerful PRs,
expensive prostitutes to disgraced aristocrats, who find themselves caught up in the modern machinery of scandal.
Like Money in the Bank
The Lunchtime of the Gods by Perry Pontac
The Launch by Simon Bovey
******inspired by the Battle of Britain
The Lost Boys by Andrew Burkin
******J. M. Barrie, novelist, playwright, and author of Peter Pan or
The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, led a life almost as magical and
interesting as his famous creation. Childless in his marriage,
Barrie grew close to the five young boys of the Llewelyn Davies family,
ultimately becoming their guardian and devoted surrogate father when
they were orphaned. Andrew Birkin draws extensively on a vast range
of material by and about Barrie, including notebooks, memoirs, and hours
of recorded interviews with the Llewelyn Davies family and their circle, to
describe Barrie’s life and the wonderful world he created for the boys.
The Lake 1.2 by Ellen Dryden
The Lake 2.2
******a creepy, brooding thriller. Mystery story involving the murder of a child,
and an odd individual being drawn back to the lake
which he knew as a child. Probably mid 80s.
The Papers of A J Wentworth (Retired) 1.4 by H.F. Ellis
The Papers of A J Wentworth (Retired) 2.4
The Papers of A J Wentworth (Retired) 3.4
The Papers of A J Wentworth (Retired) 4.4
******Comedy series about a retired teacher who moves to a small village.
It's the late 50s. AJ Wentworth has just retired from a long career at Burgrove Preparatory School spent trying to knock
the rudiments of trigonometry into a succession of thick-headed boys. The little village of Fenport however, proves not
to be the SLEEPy place he took it for - the gossip, the teasing and the daily dramatic incidents that Wentworth finds
himself caught in the middle of make him wonder if he wouldn't rather be back with 3A and his blackboard.
Paul and Yolande by Linda Grant.
******a radio play dramatizing the affair between Paul Robeson and uppercrust Brit Yolande Jackson written
by Linda Grant. Actually, Grant’s accompanying article, in the Guardian no less, is actually reasonably nuanced
when discussing Robeson’s politics. Grant writes she was more interested in Jackson, conceding
Robeson’s flaws, like:
“the terrible errors of political judgment he made, like so many western intellectuals who covered their eyes and
bit their tongues when the truth of Stalin’s torture state was there to be seen.”
In her radio play, Robeson comes off as a stentorian figure, making pronouncements on dignity and respect as if he
were always speaking at a political rally. Jackson sounds like an actress auditioning for a dinner theater production
of Love Letters. Listening to the radio play, it is difficult to understand how they could have had a
fifteen minute conversation, let alone come close to marriage.
The play largely skirts the political issues of Robeson’s life, although around the forty-two minute mark,
Jackson wonders if she might have “turned him away from the Communist path,” had their relationship
worked out differently. Robeson became a willing mouthpiece for the Stalin regime, hewing loyally to the
party line. When Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian Revolution, Robeson parroted Moscow, blaming America:
“Of Course, it was not a true uprising of the people. It was inspired by America and other agents.”
Undoubtedly, Robeson’s life has great dramatic potential. How someone with the strength and pride of Robeson
could voluntarily cede his political opinions and independence to the Communist Party, calling for the tanks to roll
into Hungary, is an intriguing question.
Take the Night by Neil McKay
********drama about the life of Roy Orbison. Success does
nothing to ease the star's insecurities.
Talking to Ted by Tim Clark
*******Playing the role of a less than stellar comedian Tim tries to come to terms with his coke habit and how he's
going to explain to his wife about the Welsh mistress which has now given him a son. His only companion he can
talk to is the teddy bear his daughter left in the car.
Travel Sick by Trevor Lock and Sem Devillart.
******A hypochondriac ENGLISHman journeys across Peru in search of true love and himself. William Hart has his
western mindset melted by the seemingly crazy, fuzzy logic and unpredictability of everyday life in Latin America.
Uncovering Iran - The Interview by Arash Aryan and Ava Mandan.
********Every year, workers in an Iranian broadcasting company have an appraisal interview to ascertain
whether they are 'good Muslims'. One particular producer attempts to bribe her way through the ordeal,
little realising how much is at stake.
Water Lens By Dominique Moloney
******When Elaine, a young homeless girl, is befriended and offered a bed for the night by the older and middleclass
Tara, she is at first suspicious – unsure of her motives. Elaine has already had first hand experience of ‘caring’ adults
and she knows to tread warily. And when it’s revealed that Tara’s daughter Juliet, a girl uncomfortably similar to Elaine,
committed suicide a year earlier, her first impulse is to run. But as trust develops, Elaine discovers that it’s Tara and not
she who is most in need of comfort and shelter from the world outside.
The Man by Raymond Briggs
******about a miniature man who appears one day in a young boy's room. Bernard Cribbins plays the tiny
cantankerous visitor, and Toby Parkes the boy, who soon gets sick of being treated like a servant.
Malice at Autumn's End by John Hyatt
*******Witchcraft, and a murder. Police thriller.
Mrs Boston by Alan Drury
*******When Andrew's wife lies dying in hospital, the one person to whom he can talk is Mrs. Boston -
an absolute stranger. His children don't like it.
Mummies & Daddies by Rony Robinson
******musical based on research about the experience of being a teenage parent.
Stages of Sound - Sugar and Snow by Samantha Ellis
*******play centred around the Kurdish community in North London
Stages of Sound - The Armour of Immanuel by Edson Burton
******an Arts Council/BBC Stages of Sound competition winner. A woman whose son was murdered six months
earlier in a road-rage incident is visited by her grandson for the first time since the funeral. However, she is
unprepared for the secrets that emerge about her son's life. Lorna Easy stars
Reans Girls by Kaite O'Reilly
******A Chilean woman and her young son arrive in Seventies Wolverhampton with nowhere to live and no contacts.
However, her luck soon changes when she discovers a local network of women who have come to the area from
all around the world and learnt to survive in their new hometown
Wooden Heart by Hattie Naylor.
******an uncomfortable play about a little-known episode of "ethnic cleansing" in Switzerland which was still going on
in the 1970s: Large numbers of Jemisch Gypsy children were forcibly removed from their parents by the
Swiss government, a policy which continued in Switzerland until 1974. In the play, Anna is a gypsy; she has lived in
an orphanage since she was taken from her parents as a baby, but now her foster mother is waiting to put her to work
on her farm in the Alps, a life of hard work and little reward.
24 Weeks by Tony Marchant
******A new and unsettling play about abortion recorded in front of an audience in the Bluecoat arts centre
for Radio 3's Free Thinking festival 2008.
.
Better Not Singing by Patrick Costeloe
******
Carnival King by Bruce Bedford
******A city slicker tries to win the cup for his float
in a Somerset village parade.
Des Res by Ed Jones
********A black comedy about a scriptwriter who loses his TV job and has to downsize from a leafy suburb to the dark
heart of Salford. A really dark and worrying, but at the same time intriguing and enthralling, imagining of what it must be
like to live a dysfunctional life in a depressing and crime-overloaded council estate.
A realistic and unnerving play.
Justice Or Murder?: The Death of Charles I by Jack Emery
*******The future of the monarchy, the abolition of the
House of Lords and a truly democratic parliament all
feature in the remarkable Putney Debates, which
preceded the execution of the king on 30 January 1649.
If I Should Go Away by Owen Sheers
********adapted from the writings of fellow Welsh poet Alun Lewis,
reveals how casualties of war are emotional as much as physical.
Every Book in the World by Nick Warburton
******You don't need a world-shattering story to write the best drama, but you need to show what makes people tick.
Here we had the Victorian book-collector Sir Thomas Phillipps moving his collection, his long-suffering wife, and a
carter moving the books; a three-hander for Benjamin Whitrow, Lia Williams and Peter Gunn. Sparks fly;
Last Night Another Soldier by Andy McNab
******Eighteen-year-old Briggsy is just three weeks into his first posting in Afghanistan and is thrilled to be part
of the action. But when his Rifle Section loses a man in battle, Briggsy is forced to confront the realities of war.
Donation by Sean Buckley
******An innovative production from the Radio Drama department, devised through a series of workshops and recorded
on location across London. Donation is a play about our bodies, the medical and spiritual implications of organ donation,
what we wish for and what survives of us.
Like an Animal
********
Migrant Memory
The Long Road to Iona by Janette Walkinshawe
******an interesting play about an inveterate walker, an elderly widow who is not prepared to sit out
the rest of her days at home just to please her relatives. She embarks on some serious long distance walking.
The Doll's Tea Set by Sue Glover
******Cara is four years old when her mother disappears. Time passes...will her mother ever return?
And if not, why not?
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm 1.5 by Norman Hunter.
- The Time Machine
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm 2.5 - Burglers
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm 3.5 - Pancakes
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm 4.5 - The Everlasting Clock
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm 5.5 -
Professor Branestawm Goes to the Seaside
******Could there be an inventor as absent-minded as Professor Branestawm?
However good his ideas are - a clock that doesn't need winding, a trap for burglars,
a machine that does the cleaning all by itself - the mad professor always seems to
end up in hilarious scrapes!
The Rotters' Club 1.4 by Jonathon Coe
The Rotters' Club 2.4
The Rotters' Club 3.4
The Rotters' Club 4.4
******Jonathan Coe's new novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop
of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension. A group of young friends
inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own
distinctive spin on to events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal
and social upheaval, The Rotters' Club captures a fateful moment in British politics
- the collapse of 'Old Labour' - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world
of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb.
Soldiers' Loves and Soldiers' Lives by Bill Jukes
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King 1.4 by E. T. A. Hoffmann
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King 2.4
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King 3.4
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King 4.4
******The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is a story written in 1816
by E. T. A. Hoffmann in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite
Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and whisks her away to
a magical kingdom populated by dolls after defeating the evil
Mouse King. In 1892, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov turned the story into
the ballet The Nutcracker, which became one of Tchaikovsky's
most famous compositions, and one of the most popular ballets in the world.
My Dark Places by James Elroy
******An investigation into the murder of crime writer, James Ellroy's mother.
She was murdered in 1958 and the case was never solved, leaving her son
to embark on years of petty crime and drinking. Only later, as a writer, did he
begin to delve into his past and set out to solve the mystery.
Moving Day by Alexandra Campbell
*******Two very different couples are moving on the same day. A mix-up occurs
with the delivery vans, and they go through each other's belongings. They
rediscover some forgotten things about themselves and each other.
The Bards of Bromley by Perry Pontac
******Another excellent piece of nonsense from Perry Pontac. When Mrs. Swerdlow conducts a writers' workshop
in Bromley, it is attended by an unusually promising group of writers: A.A.Milne, Wordsworth, Strindberg,
George Eliot and Goethe.
The Bringer of Peace by Martyn Wade
******an interesting biography of Gustave Holst, composer of "The Planets"
Old Man Goya by Julia Blackburn
******Julia Blackburn has already established herself as one of the finest
writers of non-fiction, but with Old Man Goya she takes her ability to
re-create the past to a new level in her haunting evocation of the final
years of the great Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya. Partly inspired by
the painful loss her own mother (who was also a painter), Blackburn's
desire to write about Goya developed when she learnt that in 1792,
at the age of 47, the painter went permanently deaf; "I wanted to know what
sort of world this deaf man had inhabited and how he had managed
to live with the isolation of deafness and how it had changed the way he used
his remaining senses". The result is a remarkably perceptive voyage into
Goya's mind, which hovers between history and fiction, as Blackburn moves
between the death of her own mother, visits to Goya's old haunts in Spain and
France, and the painter's own remarkable lust for life in the midst of domestic upheavals
and the horrors of warfare in early 19th-century Spain.
Heart Transplant 1.2 by Jonathan Holloway
Heart Transplant 2.2
*******the story of the world's first heart transplant. A ex-boxer, Louis Washansky, is waiting to receive a heart,
the heart of a young girl. He's dying. It's 1967, Cape Town, and Christian Barnard, a charismatic medic, goes
into action with his team of surgeons. Unmissable, it starred Miles Anderson as Barnard and Ian MacNeice
as Washansky; Jeremy Howe directed
Callum by F. Todhunter
*******Set in a vocational college for the disabled, it starred Callum, who wants to keep his head down
and get his gardening qualification, Mr. Gough, who doesn't like him, and a young disabled lady who's
just been taken on as a new teacher and who's determined to end the status quo, especially if it means
that Gough will have to do some work.
Fly Girls by D J Britton
*******Comic fiction and real voices from Britain's New Circus movement intertwine
DJ Britton's comic take on Britain's new circus movement, featuring the story of two university flatmates struggling
with the heavy workload of their law course. Holly imposes a strict regime of hard work, physical fitness and
celibacy to get through, while Chaz hopes it will all go away - but everything changes when they meet a juggler
who persuades them to run away to the big top.
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
******The more startling for the economy of its prose and plot, this novel's story,
set among the manicured lawns and euphemisms of Whispering Glades Memorial
Park in Hollywood, satirizes the American way of death and offers Waugh's memento mori.
India and Pakistan '07 Husud by Samina Baig
*******Samina Baig's tale of sibling rivalry, jealousy, forbidden passion and murder.
Set in an India waking up to massive change, this story of two sisters and one man
reflects the unease between old world values and new world ambition.
The January Wedding by Beatrice Colin
********In 1969 a landmark court case was brought in the UK. A young Polish woman petitioned for her marriage
to an elderly Warsaw academic to be annulled. The annulment was granted on the basis that the marriage had
taken place under duress. He had married her to save her from imprisonment under the Polish communist regime.
Kind Hearts by Clive Brill
******On the making of Kind Hearts and Coronets.
The Help 1.10 by Kathryn Stockett
The Help 2.10
The Help 3.10
The Help 4.10
The Help 5.10
The Help 6.10
The Help 7.10
The Help 8.10
The Help 9.10
The Help 10.10
*******Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree,
but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would
normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared
and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside
her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl
she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's
business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone
too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine
project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and
their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement
of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.
A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about
the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
The Prospect s01e01 by Avie Luthra (3 hours)
The Prospect s01e02
The Prospect s01e03
******Newly-elected MP Bobby Khan is forced to question his own motivations and political
and personal values. His cousin is arrested on a terrorism charge and Bobby himself
becomes involved in a murder case in his constituency.
The Prospect s02e01 The Prodigal Fraudster by Mike Harris (3 hours)
The Prospect s02e02 The Enemy Within by Jon Sen
The Prospect s02e03 Animal Magic by Avie Luthra
********MP Bobby Khan has his sights set on a ministerial post, but things don't go quite to plan.
Bobby's mother Elizabeth is also delivered a shock which changes the family dynamics forever.
An unexpected visitor brings danger to the Khan household as the murky world of fraud and
double dealings are brought to the fore.
The Hit Man by J.C.W. Brook
*******a highly entertaining story about a hired killer's loyalties
The Bed and Breakfast That Time Forgot by Robin Driscoll
Villette 01.10 Bretton by Charlotte Bronte
Villette 02.10 Turning a New Leaf
Villette 03.10 Isadore
Villette 04.10 The Long Vacation
Villette 05.10 La Terresse
Villette 06.10 A Burial
Villette 07.10 Monsieur Paul
Villette 08.10 Friendship
Villette 09.10 Cloud
Villette 10.10 Finis
*********"Villette! Villette! Have you read it?" exclaimed George Eliot
when Charlotte Brontë's final novel appeared in 1853. "It is a still more
wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural
in its power."
Arguably Brontë's most refined and deeply felt work, Villette draws on her
profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. Lucy Snowe,
the narrator of Villette,flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new
file as a teacher at a French boarding school in the great cosmopolitan capital
of Villette. Soon Lucy's struggle for independence is overshadowed by both
her freindship with a wordly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic
schoolmaster. Brontë's strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any
man in her society with whom she can live and still be free.
"Villette is an amazing book," observed novelist Susan Fromberg Schaeffer.
"Written before psychoanalysis came into being, Villette is nevertheless a
psychoanalytic work—a psychosexual study of its heroine, Lucy Snowe.
Written before the philosophy of existentialism was formulated, the novel's
view of the world can only be described as existential. . . . Today it is read
and discussed more intensely than Charlotte Brontë's other novels, and many
critics now beleive it to be a true master-piece, a work of genius that more than
fulfilled the promise of Jane Eyre." Indeed, Virginia Woolf judged Villette to be Brontë's "finest novel."
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