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Press Releases
Brand new drama on Radio 3 to welcome in the New Year
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New plays by critically acclaimed writers Charlotte Jones, Mike Bartlett, Simon Stephens and Gary Mitchell welcome in an exciting new season of drama on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 in the New Year.
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Dramas inspired by coincidences, the terrorist attacks on London and the long-lasting love affair between a poet and an artist form part of the New Year line up on Drama On 3.
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Charlotte Jones's In The Absence Of Geoff, is a new play commissioned by Radio 3, and tells the tale of Geoff played by West End theatre star Adam Godley.
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Fat, forty and facing ruin: Geoff's small business is about to collapse and his marriage is failing. Even his 12-year-old daughter despises him.
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In despair Geoff fakes a fugue (total memory loss). Claiming total amnesia, Geoff grabs his chance to make a new start. He's successful at first, but his daughter becomes suspicious.
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Can Geoff cling onto the good things he's found second time round?
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Mike Bartlett's The Steps is a new play specially written for Radio 3 and follows an elderly lady, Rosie, who lives in an old people's home.
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She escapes into the wintry landscape with a reluctant teenager tagging along behind her. On her journeys, she meets a woman in her late thirties and a nine-year-old girl. They're on the run too. And they are all called Rosie.
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The Steps stars Geraldine McEwan and Julia Ford with Lauren Mote making her radio drama debut before a stint in the West End in Oliver.
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There is also a new adaptation of Terence Rattigan's critically acclaimed Fifties play, The Deep Blue Sea.
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Hester, a woman who left her respectable husband for a wild RAF pilot with alcoholic tendencies, is left in the lurch by the rapidly cooling romance she gave her reputation up for.
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When neighbours discover her attempted suicide, the aftershocks reverberate around the tenement house she lives in.
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Hester feels she has nothing to live for. But another resident, Mr Miller, a social outcast from a suspected homosexual offence, befriends her and the two find a moving and curious kinship.
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The cast includes Carolyn Pickles as Hester and Hugh Ross as Mr Miller.
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And there is provocative writing from playwright Simon Stephens with a radio transfer of his new play Pornography, which made its UK debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2008.
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It is July 2005 and Britain feels like the centre of the world. Everyone is talking about current and forthcoming big events – Live 8, G8, The London Olympics. In schools, offices, streets, shops, parks and homes, there's a buzz in the air.
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But as four suicide bombers board tube trains in central London, everything is about to change.
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Pornography provides a snapshot of modern Britain as it crashes from the euphoria and promise of the 2012 Olympics announcement into the devastation of 7/7.
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Echoes Of War by award-winning writer Gary Mitchell is a new play specially written for Radio 3 which explores the raw loose ends left by the Good Friday agreement.
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Hugh, a Belfast music band teacher, is in hospital after a car crash. Since his daughter was killed by the IRA during the peace process, he has become a bigoted, disillusioned Protestant.
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After he is visited by Charlie, a volatile but talented pupil, the play goes back in time to discover how their relationship and views changed over the past two decades.
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The play is an exploration of music, politics, friendship and Protestant culture.
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Alone Together, by BAFTA award-winning dramatist Neil McKay, is inspired by Byron Rogers' acclaimed biography, The Man Who Went Into The West. It is a portrait of the curious marriage and lives of acclaimed poet RS Thomas and his wife artist Elsi Eldridge.
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Thomas was an unpublished poet when he met Elsi but she already had the makings of a successful artist. Having won the Royal College of Art's Prix de Rome scholarship and sold three paintings at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, she left all this behind her to join him in his remote Welsh parishes.
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The couple retreated to the western-most tip of North Wales, living in a tiny cottage that resembled a cave, working in their overcoats as water streamed down the walls.
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Notes to Editors
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Drama On 3 schedule –
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Sunday 4 January: In The Absence Of Geoff by Charlotte Jones
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Sunday 11 January: The Steps by Mike Bartlett
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Sunday 18 January: repeat (to be confirmed)
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Sunday 25 January: Pornography by Simon Stephens
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Sunday 1 February: The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan
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Sunday 8 February: Echoes Of War by Gary Mitchell
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Sunday 15 February: Alone Together by Neil McKay Ìý
Radio 3 Publicity
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