The award-winning and critically acclaimed Wireless Theatre Company strives to keep radio theater alive and well. Collected here are six full-cast dramatizations that are sure to send shivers down your spine.
Windover
By Brita Bradbury
Directed by Cherry Cookson
This ghost story is set on the wild Atlantic coast of North Devon, told through the eyes of Jenny, a girl of nearly nineteen, whose recently deceased grandmother Mary has bequeathed her “Windover,” the cottage where she is staying with her father and his girlfriend during summer vacation. Before long, Jenny is troubled by visions of two teenage girls and learns, from a photograph taken in 1934, that these girls are her grandmother Mary and Mary’s friend Cathy. As the days go by, Jenny finds herself drawn into the tragic events that occurred nearly eighty years earlier.
Burke & Hare
By Terence Newman
Directed by Robert Valentine
Burke & Hare is the story of the infamous nineteenth-century Scottish grave-robbers who weren’t Scottish and didn’t rob graves. They were actually Irish, and since robbing graves to supply the needs of Edinburgh’s anatomists proved to be rather hard work, they just took to murdering people—usually their neighbors—for profit. In collaboration with their common-law wives, they set about supplying corpses for Dr. John Knox, an eminent Scottish surgeon with considerable enthusiasm and gusto. The play follows their business exploits, from small beginnings, through their days of peak output, and to the final reckoning—set against a world that is becoming recognizably modern.
The Cask of Amontillado
By Edgar Allan Poe
The Cask of Amontillado is Edgar Allan Poe’s short but enigmatic masterpiece. Set in an unnamed Italian City, we hear the story of how Montresor lures Fortunato through the catacombs into the Montreso family vault, where he chains him up and bricks him in for eternity. Why he does it we will never know, but he does so with a casual savagery that is truly chilling.
The Woman on the Bridge
By Marty Ross
Directed by David Beck
Chatsworth House during the Second World War. The Devonshire family makes way for an evacuated girls’ school, the grand interiors converted to dormitories and classrooms. Pupils Ceri and Gwyneth explore these new surroundings and their history, above and below stairs. But a ghost story about a screaming woman on the bridge on the grounds seems disturbingly true—and all the more disturbing for the parallels it presents with the secret love affair they discover their charismatic teacher Miss Cairns is involved in.
Crooker’s Kingdom, Part One and Crooker’s Kingdom, Part Two
By Marty Ross
Directed by Robert Valentine
Sir Richard Arkwright has brought modernity to a remote corner of Derbyshire with the creation of Cromford Mill. Now, as his crowning glory, he’s going to build himself a castle—but first a strange outcrop of rocks will have to be removed. Locals warn Arkwright of a local legend about “Crooker,” a dangerous nature spirit, but Sir Richard scoffs at such notions—until it becomes clear an uncanny force in the landscape is prepared to fight him for ownership of the valley. Recorded on Halloween night, 2015, at Cromford Mills itself, Wireless Theatre and playwright Marty Ross present another unique live radio drama recording, mingling Cromford’s history with the supernatural chills of an authentic local legend.
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“Be prepared to be challenged as a listener. If you’re up for the challenge, these plays will transform you!”
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Audio Drama Review (5/5)