Radio Plays

A new radio play for BBC Radio 4.

In Lucy Caldwell’s Martians, Tia Bannon plays a young midwife who is preparing to leave her family and the world she knows to begin life on another planet.

One of the twelve chosen few to be picked to take their skills to Mars to begin new life, just as her grandmother did when she moved from Jamaica to London and her father’s ancestors leaving a famine-riddled Ireland for America, Laura has to choose what to take and what to leave behind. She also has to say goodbye to her family for good, she doesn’t want any fuss, just another day, she is going to make a difference, a star in the sky….

Martians is currently available on BBC iPlayer

Cast and Creatives:

Laura ….. Tia Bannon
Michael ….. Toheeb Jimoh
Margo ….. Angel Coulby
Lorraine ….. Michelle Greenidge
Eoin ….. Lloyd Hutchinson
Joan ….. Joy Richardson
Angharad & Young Woman 1 ….. Tallulah Bond
Ijaaz, Male Voice ….. Ronny Jhutti
Older Woman, Radio Presenter & Automated Voice ….. Beth Goddard
Written by ….. Lucy Caldwell
Produced & Directed by ….. Celia De Wolff

Radio Plays

“Mayday” – BBC Radio 4 Drama

Radio Plays

Lucy Caldwell’s new play for radio, “Mayday”, premieres on BBC Radio 4 on Monday, June 12. After broadcast, it will be available for a time on BBC iPlayer. For more information, and to listen, click here.

Synopsis

Coralie is a nineteen year old student. It’s the morning of the 30th April and she had just taken a Mifepristone pill, the first stage of a medical abortion. As she waits the 24 hours until she is due to take the second set of pills which will complete the procedure, she relates and reflects on the events and circumstances which brought her to this moment.

Set in Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK in which the 1967 Abortion Act does not apply, Mayday takes us into the mind of an increasingly isolated, conflicted, and terrified young woman who, having ordered the drugs online – illegally – fears that she, and anyone she might confide in, could face prosecution and jail if her actions are discovered.

Starring Eileen O’Higgins (Brooklyn, My Mother and Other Strangers) as Coralie, the cast also includes Anthony Boyle (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Sophie Robinson (Rebellion, Fifteen) and Imogen Doel (The Importance of Being Earnest, Whisper). Production is by Heather Larmour.

Dear Baby Mine

Radio Plays

dear_baby_mineLucy Caldwell’s new radio drama for BBC Radio 4, Dear Baby Mine, was broadcast in June 2016. The omnibus edition of the drama will be available on BBC iPlayer for 30 days.

Synopsis

When Conor is told he has the condition azoospermia and is not producing any sperm, he struggles to come to terms with the implications of his diagnosis. He cannot father his own child. He cannot give his wife Keeley the baby she so desperately longs for. He feels lost, confused, guilty, responsible. All his assumptions and expectations for the future are thrown out of the window.

As both he and Keeley try to come to terms with the fact that Conor cannot father a child naturally and explore the other options available to them they embark on an emotional rollercoaster that will challenge their assumptions, their relationship, and their idea of family.

Listen to the drama on iPlayer

Cyprus Avenue

Radio Plays

cyprusOn April 1, BBC broadcast Cyprus Avenue, one of the stories from Lucy’s anthology Multitudes. The story was read by Laura Pyper and the programme was produced by Heather Larmour.

Cyprus Avenue tells of a chance meeting at the airport awaiting an increasingly-delayed flight sees a young couple discover they have childhood histories – and family tragedies – in common, growing up on the streets of East Belfast, experiences which have defined every aspect of their lives, not least their relationship to the city they once called home. But as they journey back to Belfast, to their families and to the reminders of the past, they slowly begin to look to the future.

‘Cyprus Avenue’ is included in Lucy’s forth-coming debut short story collection ‘Multitudes’ to be published by Faber on 5th May

Quicksands

News, Radio Plays

quicksandsLucy Caldwell’s new radio play “Quicksands”, a drama about the slippery and shifting notions of truth and memory was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on December 8. Though no longer available on BBC iPlayer more information can be found here..

A young married couple, Tessa and James, hire a caravan for a week’s holiday on the wind-swept Northern Irish coast with their two young children. It’s make-or-break for their relationship: James is in love with someone else and wants a separation. Clambering over the sand dunes on the beach Tessa and the children get into difficulties and find themselves trapped in quicksand.

When James realises what is happening to his family he turns and leaves them, running away. James insists he was running for help, but Tessa believes, has always believed, that James turned his back on his family and intended to leave them for dead. But just who is telling the truth?

The Watcher on the Wall

Radio Plays

macnieceTo mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the story of poet Louis MacNeice’s trans-Atlantic love affair with the American short story writer Eleanor Clark and the poetry it inspired, dramatised from his Letters by playwright Lucy Caldwell.

In 1939 Louis MacNeice fell in love. The poet had had a tough few years: his world had fallen apart when his adored wife eloped with their American lodger, and now, with divorce proceedings acrimonious and MacNeice a single parent looking after their young son Daniel, the poet plunges himself into his travels and his work.

Then, in the spring of 1939, MacNeice met Eleanor Clark, a young, beautiful and gifted short-story writer. Their intense, passionate, desperate affair – he in England, she in New York, the war and the Atlantic Ocean between them – consumed the next few years, and the poet’s imagination. Communicating through letters, their relationship becomes for MacNeice one of pursuit rather than possession, but nevertheless amid the pressures of parenthood, debts, deadlines and the on-going war, it inspires some of MacNeice’s most famous and passionate poetry, most notably “Meeting Point” and “Cradle Song for Eleanor”. But can a relationship that exists more in the mind than reality ever endure, or will its fate simply be that of a passing poetic fantasy?

The Watcher on the Wall was broadcast on Wed 4 Sep 2013. For more information, see the BBC iPlayer page here.