NEWS
Following the repeats of 'Two Men from Delft' and 'Adulteries of a Provincial Wife' in 2008 (both now available to listen to on this website) 'The Pattern of Painful Adventures' (see photo below) with Antony Sher and Will Keen was repeated on Sunday April 25th, 2010. There is a stage version of this play available ( here).
'A Dose of Fame' - about the novelist E M Forster (see picture - below, right - and BBC Press release, below) with Stephen Campbell-Moore and Diana Quick went out on October 16th, 2009. 'Insightful' was the critics' verdict. It was repeated on 16 November 2011.
'Mrs. Tolstoy' - about the great man's wife - went out as the Woman's Hour Drama in August 2010. 'A domestic tragedy that's lit by flashes of wit, love and insight,' Daily Mail. 'In revealing the marriage's horrors, Wakelam is suggesting that Tolstoy was like a character in one of his own novels - fully formed and unstoppable,' The Stage. Available here.
'Living With Princes', about the French Essayist, Montaigne, was broadcast on Radio 3 on 23 January 2011, with Roger Allam as Montaigne.
We record a new play for Radio 4 about the novelist Edith Wharton shortly. It's called 'The Jinx Element' and will go out in the Saturday afternoon Radio 4 slot to accompany a dramatisation of 'Ethan Frome on 21 January 2012.
There's also a new play about events surrounding the death of the painter Caravaggio, currently called 'Waiting for the Boatman,' which will be recorded in January to go out as an Afternoon Play in the first half of 2012.
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BBC Press Release A Dose of Fame (October 2009)
22 September 2007
Interview 'I sold my home to house-sit' by Ros Anderson in The Guardian.
From David Eldridge's blog, commenting on the Guardian article
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Unsung Hero
"There are many important people in the story of the early-to-mid-nineties new writing boom apart from the writers themselves and the directors who staged the plays.
There was Stephen Daldry, Robin Hooper, Graham Whybrow and Ian Rickson at the Royal Court: Max Stafford-Clark: Dominic Dromgoole, Nick Drake and Joanne Reardon at the Bush: Paul Sirett and Lin Coghlan at the Soho: Ted Craig, Phil Wilmott and Ken McClymont elsewhere on the fringe: agents Alan Radcliffe, Mel Kenyon and Nick Marston and of course Sue Higginson, Jack Bradley, Nicky Wright and Diane Borger at the NT and NT Studio - to name but a few - before anyone gets upset at being left out.
But one great unsung hero encouraging writers in their first or second plays is my friend and writer Stephen Wakelam. Steve was pretty much the in-house mentor for young playwrights at the NT Studio in the mid-nineties and as well as myself took Martin McDonagh, Jonathan Harvey, Roy Williams, Abi Morgan and Moira Buffini amongst others under his wing.
Steve would no doubt modestly get flustered at the thought and say the writers were going to do it anyway but I think he's too modest and know he helped us all in different ways at that stage. He guided me wisely away from writing a play set in a betting shop and steered me towards Chekhov. We ruminated over many pints the change in the air with the Tory demise and the New Labour beginning. 'Summer Begins' was one fantastically happy result of SW's wise nudging. But as he said in the Guardian on Saturday he's been wandering fantastically abroad these last ten years and almost as soon we became friendly he was off. But we've just about kept in touch these last years with the odd phone call, pint, these days email and even trip to the theatre. Good on yer Steve.
Posted by David Eldridge at 09.36"