Sean O'Casey's tragicomic masterpiece set in a working-class Dublin tenement in the Irish Civil War. The Boyles are blighted by poverty and the alcoholism of their self-aggrandising patriarch. Will a surprise inheritance improve life for the famil
Read more…The Saturday Play: The Other World
In this Victorian thriller, the wife of an eminent barrister is found dead. It becomes clear that she has been gradually poisoned, and her husband is arrested. But there are others who might have been keen to see he
The Saturday Play: The American Dentist
A comedy about democracy, diplomacy and dentistry by Mary Baker.
When Dr Thomas W Evans became I imperial court dentist to Napoleon III neither of them realised it was an appointment that was to change the cour
Ann Vaux, a cousin of a conspirator, faces questioning in 1606, a year after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.
Ann Vaux, cousin of the conspirator Robert Catesby, sets off from her Essex home on a pilgrimage to St
Read more…The Saturday Play: Games
BBC Radio 4 FM, 17 February 2001 14.30
Synopsis
A young woman learns about malice and manipulation in Mike Walker's drama, set against the backdrop of Cosi Fan Tutte. The editor of a "lad's" magazine proposes a bet to prevent
Fascinated and preoccupied by the idea of this social event,Virginia Woolf wrote this story sequence around the same time as writing the novel Mrs Dalloway. In each of these three stories written in Woolf's distinctive style, the listener is offered
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A group of children all share one dream, to set up their very own theatre company.
The Bishop takes the children of the Blue Doors Theatre Company to Stratford.
Mrs Potter-Smith aims to bring the curtain down on the Blue Doors' latest show.
I
Read more…Radio 3 presents new interpretations of two radio scripts by Angela Carter, originally written and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in the 1970s. Both these scripts embody the combination of stylistic daring, playful wit, dazzling language, and high intellec
Read more…The Saturday Play: Peter Pan In Scarlet
A true adventure in the officiaI sequel to J.M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan. Once again Wendy travels from Kensington Gardens to Neverland, where she discovers
Nowhereland and climbs the dangerous and slippery s
Adapted by Robert Forrest.
As the eighteenth century turns into the nineteenth, a small Staffordshire village plays host to a tragic love triangle, in this adaptation of a literary classic.
Carpenter Adam Bede is in love with the beautiful Hetty
Read more…The Saturday Play: Seven Circles around the Fire
By Mahesh Dattani. Uma Rao is the daughter-in-law of Bangalore's deputy commissioner of police. Her husband is a superintendent. When she starts research into the Hijra (eunuch) community for her unive
Radio adaptation of Amanda Whittington's stage play about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, and the women in her life during her final days.
Cast:
Ruth Ellis.......Maxine Peake
Sylvia.......Siobhan Finneran
Jack Gale.......Joe A
Read more…Night Fears
A night-watchman takes on a new job and must prepare himself for anyone he might meet.
The Waits
Mr Mariner is looking forward to Christmas Eve when there's an unexpected knock at the door.
W.S.
Novelist Walter Streeter has dev
Read more…By Fraser Grace
Three stories which re-tell biblical tales.
Once I Was Dead
The subject of one of Jesus's most famous and divisive miracles finds that resurrection is not all that it is cracked up to be.
Read by James Fleet
The Assassin’s Mother-
Read more…Four writers each celebrate a single, readily available sensual experience that gives them intense pleasure.
Five 0 'Clock in the Afternoon
By Timberlake Wertenbaker
"It started in childhood with the late sun drying the sea off my back, the prickl
Read more…Be advised these dramas contain sexual references and language that may offend.
The return of the saga that weaves fiction with real characters from history to follow the fortunes of the Oldman family - from small-time business and petty crime to
Read more…Set in 1930s London, Harriet must battle Ada, the new nanny, for the love of her young daughter.
ADA: When it comes to whose child, Flora might decide. Who she cleaves to. Whose bed she chooses in the middle of the night. Who she loves.
HARRIET:
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John Steinbeck's story set against the backdrop of America's Great Depression, following a family of Oklahoma farmers heading west in search of work. Dramatised by Donna Franceschild.
Cast:
Tom.........Robert Sheehan
Preacher Casy.........Zubin Varl
Read more…By Sophie Radice, Adapted for radio by Charlotte Jones.
A mother fears that a child parenting expert is endangering his own seven-year-old son, Henry, by testing out his theories of early independence on him.
When Anna finds a boy alone and baref
Read more…By Kate Summerscale, based on a true story, abridged by Katrin Williams.
"The judges were presented with a singular case on Monday 14 June, a month after they had heard their first divorce suit. Henry Oliver Robinson, a civil engineer, was petitio
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