30 October 2001
An Evening of BBC Radio Comedy
Arranger: Malcolm Grant

Back by popular demand, a selection of the best of Radio Comedy.

20 November 2001
The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams.
Arranger: Neil-Jon Morphy

The best of the least often performed of his plays. A defrocked priest is working as a tour guide for a group of sexually repressed women. Passions flare when they arrive at a hotel in the MexicanJungle. "... an awesome and powerful new drama."NY World Telegram & Sun - "... Williams' most mature work."NY Daily News - "... the most fruitful and versatile exercise by our best living playwright."NY Journal-American - "... Tennessee Williams at the top of his form" NY Times

4 December 2001
Deadly Nightcap by Francis Durbridge
Arranger: Jack Martin

Murder and mystery abound in this ingenious play from the master of the genre. Initially the plot seems to concern a greedy husband plotting to kill his wife. Disposing first of his brother-in-law, Jack enlists the help of his girlfriend in his plan to murder Sarah. But his scheme goes horribly wrong and he, not his wife, ends up dead. There are so many possible suspects and motives that the truth eludes us all ... although Cliff seems to be on the right track.

18 December 2001
Blackadder's Christmas Carol by Rowan Atkinson.
Arranger: Valerie Antonietti

Ebeneezer Blackadder receives a visit on Christmas Eve from a Spirit who shows him the wicked ways of his ancestors and two possible futures for his descendants.

8 January 2002
Home and Beauty by Somerset Maugham.
Arranger: David Wark

A soldier returns very late from WW1 to discover that his wife has presumed his dead, married his best friend and had a second child. Both men refuse to give in, she finally divorces them both. The only farce Maugham ever wrote and probably one of the funniest plays ever written.

22 January 2002
The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry.
Arranger:

Before being an Oscar winning movie and the musical High Society, it started out as a play. A woman, on the eve of her second marriage, is faced with the harsh reality of how people really see her. Comic goings on in the upper American class.

5 February 2002
The Physicist by Friedrich Dürrenmatt - trans. by James Kikup.
Arranger: Wolfgang Schütt

Because in a mad world the only defence of the sane is to assume madness, the genius who has invented a nuclear weapon of world- consuming force decides he can only protect the world from destructive ambition by pretending to be made. He is pursued by two agents of the super-powers who also pretend to be madmen. In the end, all three find themselves totally in the power of a truly made megalomaniac.

19 February 2002
An Experiment with an Air Pump by Shelagh Stephenson.
Arranger: Martin Gatehouse

1799 - On the eve of a new century, the house buzzes with scientific experiments, furtive romance and farcical amateur dramatics. 1999 - In a world of scientif chaos, cloning and genetic engineering, the cellar of the same house reveals a dark secret buried for 200 years.

5 March 2002
The Secret Rapture by David Hare.
Arranger: Frances Favre

The writer's greatest play, according to some. Two sisters Isobel, a serene and good person and Marion, an ambitious Tory Junior Minister, gather for their father's funeral. Katherine, their young alcoholic stepmother wants to work for Isobel's design company and is reluctantly accepted. This paves the way for tragedy and disaster involving Isobel's lover and Marion's evangelical, earnest husband.

26 March 2001
The Rehearsal or Love Punished by Jean Anouilh - trans. by Jeremy Sams.
Arranger: Gabriella Pertile

A hedonistic Count and his friends rehearse Marivaux's The Double Inconstancy in the rural splendour of a provincial castle. Most of the 'actors' keep to the amorous rules and restrict their dalliances to their own class. Yet when the Count himself threatens to step beyond theatrical boundaries by falling in love with a young governess, stage romance suddenly becomes the drama of life. This sparkling translation was presented in the West End to critical acclaim.

The Diary of Anne Frank dramatized by Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett.
Arranger: Ann Oakley

Few more poignant true stories emerged from World War II than the diary of young Anne Frank. Published long afterwards by her father, the only family survivor, it records the minutiae of twenty-five months that two Jewish families spent in niding from the Gestapo in an Amsterdam warehouse attic. The constant secrecy, growing hunger and friction of living in such cramped conditions could not dull Anne's vibrant personality or her passion for living.

7 May 2002
Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn.
Arranger: Siân Ackroyd

The library office of a provincial newspaper is a scene of utter confusion - the cluttered chaos of the room matching the lives of its staff. It is also a scene of warmth and ligh-heartedness. In comes Leslie, a new young assistant with a passion for organisation who transforms the office and the lives of its inhabitants into something orderly and neat - and also arid and colourless. An announcement that the paper is to close leads to a struggle between order and chaos.

4 June 2002
Closing Event:
The Herbal Bed by Peter Whelan.
Arranger: Diane Simmance

The play is based on actual events which occurred in Stratford-upon- Avon in the summer of 1613, when William Shakespeare's elder daughter Susanna Hall was publicly accused of having a sexual liaison with Rafe Smith, a married neighbour and family friend. Susanna sues her accuser, young Jack Lane, for slander in the court of Worcester Cathedral. Susanna's husband, the respected physician of Stratford, John Hall, is desperate for her to clear her name in order to save his practice, and he gives her his complete support. But how can he avoid the fact that one summer's night, while he was away from Stratford, Rafe Smith was seen secretly leaving their herbal garden? Faced with political divisions within the church, the hearing in the bishop's court becomes a risky gamble as three people's private lives are held up to the glare of intense public scrutiny in this emotional thriller whose outcome is anything but certain. (A huge hit with the Royal Shakespeare Company.)
"... Whelan creates a play about relative and absolute truth, about morality, compromise and love. The result is absorbing, intelligent and funny." The Financial Times (London) - "Peter Whelan's THE HERBAL BED ... (is) a marvellous piece, tender, wise and generous of spirit ... Whelan has created a remarkably persuasive and touching portrait of a family in crisis. Every character comes to life and, although he doesn't appear, Shakespeare is a powerful presence ... Whelan's exploration of what Susanna calls "love's alchemy" is deeply moving. He writes beautifully ..." The Daily Telegraph (London).

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