Graham Gauld Radio Plays
SINGLE PLAYS
THE SACRED FLAME....1965
by Somerset Maugham. With Dame Sybil Thorndike, Jill Balcon, Carleton Hobbs, John Graham.
THE RAINBOW MAN....1965
By Nicholas Palmer, 17 Nov 65. Home Service; Afternoon Theatre. A teenage girl hero-worships a worldly-wise magician who visits her family once a year. Cast: Dick Bentley and Miriam Margolyes, with Preston Lockwood and Douglas Hankin. Produced by Grahan Gauld and Norman Wright.
THE DUKE IN DARKNESS (no details)
by Ashley Dukes, with Earnest Milton and Marius Goring.
JUMBO....1976
By James Follett. 13Mar 76, rpt. 15 Mar 76. When a Transatlantic Airlines flight leaves for London it seems like routine, but many tricks of fate are in store. With Nigel Lambert, Eva Haddon, Leslie Heritage, Haydn Jones, Paul Meier, Deborah Page, Alan Tilvern, Jean England, John Levitt, Rosalind Adams, Trader Faulkner, Clifford Norgate. 90min; technical adviser Leonard Cutler.
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE....1976
by Joseph Kesselring. 9.10.76, R4, Saturday Night Theatre. This was
the last time Dame Sybil Thorndike was well enough to come to
Broadcasting House. This also starred Athene Seyler, Prunella Scales,
Dinsdale Landen, Desmond Walter Ellis and Heron Carvic.
This was a famous production of a perennially funny play. First broadcast in 1971, it was much repeated and also issued commercially (in a box with KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS). It was perfectly cast and beautifully played. - B.P.
THREE DAYS OF FROST....1977
by R.D.Wingfield. Saturday Night Theatre. 12.2.1977/2030; Leslie Sands/Steve Hodson/Jack May.
Barry Pike adds: Leslie Sands played the bewildered police sergeant in OUTBREAK OF FEAR, and it was he who first brought Frost to life, in THREE DAYS OF FROST, broadcast in 1977 in 'Saturday Night Theatre'. A complex mystery about a lost child, set in sub-zero temperatures at Christmas, it also featured Jack May as Superintendant Mullett and Steve Hodson as D.C.Barnard, here the narrator.
BLOOD MONEY....1977
by R.D.Wingfield, 26.8.77. Afternoon Theatre. With John Bentley/ William Eedle/ Jonathan Scott.
THE BOX OF DELIGHTS....1978
by John Masefield, adapted by John Keir Cross.
Don Campbell adds: This was a re-working by Keir Cross and was first aired in 1978 or thereabouts. The marvellous David Davis acts as narrator (Kay Harker as a man) and the production retains the Hely-Hutchinson music - to be expected, because David would have been involved with the originals on Children's Hour in 1943 and 1948. Although much truncated, this is still an adaptation that is surely rewarding to both child and adult.
Other details: 24.12.1977/2030,David Davis/Jean English/Cyril Shaps - ND
AGENTS AND PATIENTS....date nk....c1980?
by Anthony Powell, dramatised by Frederick Bradnum.
THE SWORD IN THE STONE....1981
by T.H.White, dramatised by Neville Teller. This starred Sir Michael Hordern as Merlin, and used the original and newly orchestrated music by Benjamin Britten, conducted by Stuart Bedford. 120min.
Other details: 26.12.1981/2000, also starred Toby Robertson.
B.P: - The boyhood of King Arthur, from T.H.White's famous, fantastic original. Great fun, with Michael Hordern in characteristic mode, beaming benignly through his voice and doing his eccentric best for Wart (the young Arthur). Britten's music greatly enhanced Graham Gauld's production.
ND adds:......I remember reading a comic book version of this with great enjoyment when I was about nine, and I can still recall the pictures. I remember an exasperated Merlin shouting "Blast me to Bermuda", and on hearing the recording, thirty-five years later, I was listening for the line.....to my surprise, it was there. Neville tells me that the rights are owned by the Disney organisation; it can't be repeated - not even on BBC7.
DAUGHTER OF TIME....1982
by Josephine Tey, dramatised by Neville Teller, starring George
Baker.
Peter Gilmore as her detective Alan Grant, hospitalised by a
smashed leg, and investigating the murders of the Princes in the Tower
to occupy the time. Graham Gauld's production of Neville Teller's
script used parts of Shakespeare's Richard III to great effect, with
Steve Hodson at his best as the King. As a radio version of that
particular novel, it could hardly have been bettered. - B.P.
A TOUCH OF FROST....1982
Donald Campbell wrote in 1998... "This play was my initiation into the world of Rodney Wingfield, the (now) under-used and probably no-longer-used and expert radio dramatist. A fine performance from Derek Martin delivers Frost with pace and beautiful timing. The whole has plenty of twists and a satisfactory dénouement. Why no more "Frosts" were commissioned by the BBC after this one defeats me. Glad to say that I still revel in the YTV/David Jason productions, thankfully repeated ad infinitum. Leslie Sands did "Three Days of Frost" nicely, but, for me, Derek Martin has the edge. (VRPCC newsletter) ........note from N.D: both "Frosts" were produced by Graham Gauld, who also produced all of the Hobbs & Shelley "Sherlock Holmes" dramatisations .
THE YEARS BETWEEN....1983
by Daphne du Maurier, with Richard Pasco and Barbara Leigh Hunt. R4, 17.12.83, Saturday Night Theatre.
CAVALCADE....1986
by Noel Coward, 23.4.86, with Dinah Sheridan and John Pullen.
WAITING IN THE WINGS....1989
by Noel Coward starred Evelyn Laye, Dinah Sheridan, Mary Ellis,
Patricia Hayes, Mary Wimbush, Alan Wheatley, David Griffin and
Hannah Gordon.
Graham Gauld marshalled a cast of veteran actors with great skill and charm in this late Coward comedy. It was all great fun. (sad, too, at times, as when Patricia Hayes as the endearingly dotty one had to go into (mental) care - suddenly dottiness became something much more frightening.)-B.P.
ROGUE MALE....1989
by Geoffrey Household, starring Simon Cadell. SNT, 26.12.89, R4.
The great Simon
Cadell, always good on radio, was exceptionally so in this one; a classic
thriller, beautifully done. He tried but failed to kill Hitler and had
to go, literally, to ground. G.G's production got all the tension out of
it - how one longed for the treacherous persecutor to have his head
blown off (as he did).-B.P.
Don Campbell adds: This has the merit of a suitable faithfulness to the original story - unlike the quite dreadful Hollywood version with the (always) wooden Walter Pidgeon as an unconvincing hero. I wonder why ITV has never repeated the excellent Peter O'Toole version put out about 15 years ago. But to the radio play : Simon Cadell is excellent as the hero and Geoffrey Whitehead appears (wonderful radio voice) as EINE GERMAN POLICEMAN. The strange story of the hunted hero hiding in an animal hide is well handled, and the whole is a convincing and exciting adventure.
THE DIARY...(.late 80s?-ND)
by Brian Glanville. Starred Robert Harris, Jane Asher, Mary Ellis.
Graham Gauld worked with some of the grandest dames of the
theatre and invariably got incisive performances from them before the
microphone. Mary Ellis is marvellous in The Diary, as a haughty
lady with a past, betrayed by her daughter (Jane Asher in her
uncompromisingly destructive mode, very choice). - B.P.
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Plays in which Dame Flora Robson starred, in addition to those in the Flora Robson Festival:
TRAVELLER WITHOUT LUGGAGE....1980
by Jean Anouilh, which also featured Jane Asher and Mary Ellis. Afternoon Theatre, 29.6.80.
Dame Flora also starred in the following plays by Charlotte Hastings:
THE ENQUIRY....1974
22.6.1974/2030. Flora Robson/Vanessa Lee
SISTER NINIAN'S NIGHTINGALE....1977
9.7.1977/2030, Flora Robson/Irene Sutcliffe/Joan Matheson
THE SOFT SEPTEMBER AIR....1978
7.10.1978/2030 Andrew Branch/Flora Robson. Wonderful play in which Flora Robson plays a wise
lady in late middle age who looks after three student lodgers of widely differing temperaments. 90m.
WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT HENRY?....1980
4.10.1980/2030, Flora Robson, Graham Faulkner/Jane Knowles/Timothy Bateson
A VOICE IN MY HAND....1981
14.11.81; also starred Marius Goring and Jack May.(....ND.... An odd tale which reminded me
a little of "Jonas", by J.C.W.Brook. A lawyer's wife,
(Flora Robson)married for nearly thirty years, and ignored for most of
it by her husband, who has spent his life immersed in legal
papers. Even on their anniversary, his wife comes second to his job.
Then she acquires an oddly-crafted walking stick. It seems to
speak to her...)
HAL....(no details)
This featured Graham Faulkner.
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Plays starring Dame Wendy Hiller:
ANASTASIA
by Marcelle Maurette, also featuring Rosalind Shanks
THE KINGFISHER
by William Douglas Home; also starred Sir Michael Hordern and Robert
Eddison.
This was one of a series of W.D.Home plays broadcast in sequence as Home for Christmas. All four were light and charming, in a guilt-free vein now widely scorned. Michael Hordern and Wendy Hiller did not eclipse memories of Ralph Richardson & Celia Johnson in the theatre, but they run them close.-B.P.
THE SACRED FLAME
by Somerset Maugham: also starred Hannah Gordon, Julian Glover.
A DAY BY THE SEA
by N.C.Hunter also starred Sir Michael Hordern, Richard Pasco, Alan Wheatley, Barbara Leigh Hunt.
To mark Marjorie Westbury's 50th year in radio I produced WATERS OF THE MOON, by N.C. Hunter. It also starred Mary Wimbush, Patricia Hayes and Alex Jennings.
It was a joy to hear Marjorie Westbury in Water, in the Edith Evans part. She celebrated her jubilee in style, projecting glamour and sophistication (as, long ago, she did for Steve in PAUL TEMPLE). The New Year Party was admirably done - there was a real sense of a group of divers people interacting, in Graham Gauld's production.-B.P.
Apart from the plays listed, I produced and directed countless other specially-written plays for Afternoon Theatre, Saturday Night Theatre, The Monday Play, etc, such as SUNSHINE, bu Elizabeth Wainwright (with Brian Hewlett, Jennifer Piercey, Audrey Leybourne).
GRAHAM GAULD: MY TIME AS A RADIO PRODUCER
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Nigel Deacon / Diversity website
