BBC Radio 4 and the Royal Court Theatre, marking its 70th anniversary this year, have announced a major broadcast collaboration bringing decades of landmark Royal Court drama to audiences nationwide from 26 September.
At its centre is a brand-new radio production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, which premiered at the Royal Court in 2016 before transferring to Broadway. Starring Emma Fielding, Anastasia Hille and Stanley Townsend, it follows two retired nuclear physicists whose former colleague arrives unannounced at their home near a damaged power station, bringing with her a proposition that forces old alliances and divisions back into the open. It airs on Radio 4 on Saturday 26 September, 3–4.30pm.
The new production is followed by a week-long archive season on Radio 4 Extra, curated by playwright Mark Ravenhill, drawing on seven decades of BBC recordings of Royal Court premieres. The line-up spans John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, the Court’s first great hit, through to Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, debbie tucker green’s Random and Charlene James’s Cuttin’ It, with a formidable roster of past casts including Ben Whishaw, Sheila Hancock, David Bradley, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Elliot Levey, Siobhan Finneran and the late Helen McCrory. Each archive production airs at 8.30pm nightly and will also be available on BBC Sounds for 28 days after broadcast.
Alison Hindell, the BBC’s Commissioner for Radio 4 Drama and Fiction, called the season a chance to showcase “the breadth, ambition and enduring relevance of great playwriting.”
Royal Court Executive Director Will Young described it as “an absolute gift” for the theatre’s anniversary year, while Ravenhill, whose own first play was discovered and produced by the Royal Court, said the archive offered listeners the chance to trace the theatre’s evolution “from the swaggering male voice” of Osborne’s breakthrough hit “to the emergence of powerful Black and female voices in more recent years.“
The full broadcast schedule
- The Children — Saturday 26 September, 3–4.30pm, BBC Radio 4
- Look Back in Anger — Saturday 26 September, 8.30pm, Radio 4 Extra
- Roots — Sunday 27 September, 8.30pm, Radio 4 Extra
- Sizwe Banzi Is Dead — Monday 28 September, 8.30pm, Radio 4 Extra
- Top Girls — Tuesday 29 September, 8.30pm, Radio 4 Extra
- Our Country’s Good — Wednesday 30 September, 8.30pm, Radio 4 Extra
- Random — Thursday 1 October, 8.30pm, Radio 4 Extra
- Cuttin’ It — Friday 2 October, Radio 4 Extra
All broadcasts will be available via BBC Sounds for 28 days following transmission.
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