Podcast: Audio Theatre UK

Living in the same town as Marian there was a little girl called Gwendolen. Marian didn’t know her very well, though they went to the same school and sometimes smiled at each other in church. Her father and mother were always climbing mountains and lecturing about them afterward, so Gwendolen had to live with her aunt, who was very rich and wore a lot of rings. In many ways Gwendolen was a nice girl, but she had an exceptionally large tummy. Some people said that it was her own fault, because she was always sitting about eating marzipan. But some people said that she couldn’t help her tummy, and had to eat a lot to keep it full. There were also people who said that her aunt spoiled her, being so greedy herself and always eating buttered toast…

The name of the town doesn’t really matter; but it was a big town in the middle of the country; and the first of these adventures happened to a little girl whose name was Marian. She was only seven when it happened to her, so that it was rather a young sort of adventure; but the older ones happened later on, and this is the best, perhaps, to begin with. Marian’s house was in a street called Peter Street, because there was a church in it called St Peter’s Church; and some people liked this church, because it had a great spire soaring up into the sky. But Marian’s daddy didn’t like spires, because they were so sharp and so slippery. He liked towers better, because the old church towers, he said, were like little laps, ready to catch God’s blessing. But Marian’s daddy was a queer sort of man, and nobody took much notice of what he said…

The story opens with Harry our story teller speaking at his retirement do: Alright, alright, I’ll just say a few words because convention says that I must at a retirement do. As most of you know, at Streatham nick, on the first floor is the Detective Inspector’s office, it’s always been there and many have occupied it and I’ve seen plenty come and go. In 1922, the man that had that office was as straight as an arrow, a bit of a legend, and the story he told me has haunted me, for thirty years. It’s so long ago now, I’m sure the people concerned are no longer with us. His story starts on a cold wintery night in December 1922 and it’s about six o’clock in the evening in the snug lounge of the Volunteer Inn. The pub is on the outskirts of a village called Finsey by the north Norfolk coast. On the back wall between the bar and the door is an old glass fronted display case, in it there is an old flintlock pistol and below it a Victoria Cross medal on a ribbon with a small card citation…

The story is based on a series of eight letters written by a young woman to her friend whom she tells of her life as a blind woman protected from the world by her parents and how she meets and falls in love with a sighted man whom she marries and her reaction to not being able to see her child…

The story is of two young lovers who quarrel for the first time on a walk near a Railway line, and the unexpected events that follow their parting…

Theatrical Knights is about the complex relationship between Sir Tom Seymour (Scriptwriter) and Sir Tony Randolph (Actor) and the extremes Tom is willing to go to, to brighten up his boring life. Our story takes place on a warm afternoon in the summer of 2016 in the converted stable building at the back of a large detached Victorian house in Primrose Hill, London. It is the den of the writer Sir Thomas Seymour. The walls are covered with photographs and certificates and props and memorabilia from various theatrical productions including handguns, knives and masks. There is a chess table with a game in progress. There is a desk with an old fashioned typewriter on it, a telephone and a door entry system with an intercom. To the side of the desk is a waste paper basket half-full of screwed up pieces of paper each with five or so words typed on them. The phone is ringing, much to Sir Tom’s annoyance as he tries to outmanoeuvre his mythical chess opponent…

Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted himself a grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one’s man in an honourable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the grey of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man’s part. He would have done better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed. For the town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a mixed command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter…

I stepped into the Brunswick Hotel in the East India Docks for a glass of ale. It was in the year 1853, and a wet, hot afternoon. I had been on the tramp all day, making just three weeks of a wretched, hopeless hunt after a situation on shipboard, and every bone in me ached with my heart. My precious timbers, how poor I was! Two shillings, and thrippence – that was all the money I possessed in the wide world, and when I had paid for the ale, I was poorer yet by tuppence. A number of nautical men of various grades were drinking at the bar. I sat down in a corner to rest, and abandoned myself to the most dismal reflections. I wanted to get out to Australia, and nobody, it seems, was willing to ship me in any situation on any account whatever. Captains and mates howled me off if I attempted to cross their gangways. Nothing was to be got in the shipping yards. The very crimps sneered at me when I told them that I wanted a berth. What was I, do you ask? I’ll tell you…

In Charles the Second’s day the ‘Swan’ was denounced by the dramatists as a house where unfaithful wives and mistresses met their gallants. But in the next century, when John Clarke was the Freeholder, no special imputation of that sort rested on it: it was a country inn with large stables, horsed the Brentford coach, and entertained man and beast on journeys long or short. It had also permanent visitors, especially in summer; for it was near London, and yet a rural retreat; meadows on each side, Hyde Park at back, Knightsbridge Green in front. Amongst the permanent lodgers was Mr Gardiner, a substantial man; and Captain Cowen, a retired officer of moderate means, had lately taken two rooms for himself and his son. Mr Gardiner often joined the company in the public room, but the Cowens kept to themselves up-stairs. This was soon noticed and resented, in that age of few books and free converse…

I am sure that Nature never intended me to be a self-made man. There are times when I can hardly bring myself to realize that twenty years of my life were spent behind the counter of a grocer’s shop in the East End of London, and that it was through such an avenue that I reached a wealthy independence and the possession of Goresthorpe Grange. My habits are conservative, and my tastes refined and aristocratic. I have a soul which spurns the vulgar herd. Our family, the D’Odds, date back to a prehistoric era, as is to be inferred from the fact that their advent into British history is not commented on by any trustworthy historian. Goresthorpe Grange is an historic mansion—or so it was termed in the advertisement which originally brought it under my notice. Its right to this adjective had a most remarkable effect upon its price, and the advantages gained may possibly be more sentimental than real. There is but one thing wanting to round off the medievalism of my abode…

Do you remember the one you had last night? No? Like Will – O’ – the – Wisps, aren’t they? Dreams, so universally experienced yet so unique to each and so seemingly unquantifiable. Freud contended they represented unfulfilled wishes, Jung that they were the unconscious mind glimpsing at the events of the day. Fritz Perls suggested they were parts of ourselves that had been ignored or suppressed. In the fourth century, Herodotus was saying they were simply our minds unpacking its daily cares. Harriet Van Bregmann is a wealthy woman, a very intelligent, very wealthy woman. She’s been described as many things in her 42 years but a dreamer isn’t one of them. Harriet is well-educated, well-travelled, well-heeled, well-read and well-spoken. Harriet is even, in certain circles, well-known. She’s never sought any press attention but it’s come to her as it does for some, through their marriages, their money or how they take their pleasures…