The BBC finally announced today what The Stage had already told us – there is to be a Stoppard season on BBC Radio this summer.
The headline piece is the radio debut of Stoppard’s most recent work, Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is shortly to transfer to Broadway.
I was hoping for a repeat of Radio 3’s 1993 original cast recording of Arcadia starring Bill Nighy, Felicity Kendall and Rufus Sewell. But instead we’re getting a new production of the play on Radio 4. There are also new productions of The Fifteen Minute Hamlet and Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead.
There’s also a repeat of the 1988 production of Albert’s Bridge, and repeats of a 1991 production of In The Native State, a 1978 adaptation of The Dissolution of Dominic Boot and a “1989 re-edit of the 1970 production” of Where Are They Now?
It all begins two weeks tomorrow with Albert’s Bridge followed by Arcadia the next day running a nice and lengthy two hours and fifteen minutes (a good forty five minutes longer than any normal Radio 4 play).
I can’t wait!