TALL TALES - Tuesday, December 3rd, TOURING VENUE: Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate

September’s Tall Tales will be on December 3rd at our usual 8pm. But it will be, very unusually, in a different part of North London: Highgate at the lovely Gatehouse Pub Theatre. The show will feature something like Matthew Parker, Susannah Pearse, High Trimble, Anna Savory and Tim Sutton.

Please email talltalesnight at gmail to be on the list or get online details. We have imposed a temporary or permanent price cap so it’s still £5, incredibly. The Gatehouse are good with us doing that. That tells you something impressive about The Gatehouse.

PLANE SPEAKING by Robert Hudson (April 1st, 2023, and BBC Sounds)

Plane Speaking is about a Black Box Recorder investigating a corporate crime. It’s pretty much what you’d expect. It was brilliantly directed by Sasha Yevtushenko and stars such important interpreters of my work as Fenella Woolgar and Clare Foster, and a lot of I-hope-future-important-interpreters-of-my-work, because the cast was magic. The sound design by Keith Graham and Peter Ringrose, let me tell you, is worth the price of admission.

Listen & Often and Tall Tales present

MAGNITSKY THE MUSICAL (12th January, 2020, Radio 3, and for ever on BBC Sounds as far as I can tell)

Magnitsky the Musical is about a crazy tax heist, an accountant’s quixotic quest for justice, a financier who goes on an unlikely legal crusade, the legendary Trump Tower Meeting, democracy and the very Rule of Law. I wrote it with the magical Johnny Flynn, it was directed by Sasha Yevtushenko and it stars Johnny and Paul Chahidi, and also Gus Brown, Ellie Kendrick, Fenella Woolgar and the BBC Radio rep. It won Audio Drama of the Year.

There’s a Czech version, if you’re Czech. I’m not sure how to find it.

HALL OF MIRRORS by Robert Hudson and Susannah Pearse (March 27th, 2022, and BBC Sounds)

We adapted The Mighty Fin’s 2019 show, Hall of Mirrors, for Radio 3, which was broadcast on Sunday March 27th. It stars Jamie Parker, Patsy Ferran, Sabrina Sandhu, Matthew Durkan, Jason Barnett, Neil McCaul, Michael Begley and Christine Kavanagh, the MD is Tim Sutton and the Director is Sasha Yevtushenko.

The Radio Times called it ‘an astonishing and scarily prescient piece of work’ and The Times thinks it’s ‘envelope pushing. And wildly pertinent.’

ROSSUM’S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS by Robert Hudson and Susannah Pearse (April 3rd and 10th, 2022, and BBC Sounds)

This is an adaptation of the play that gave the world ‘robot’. It stars Paul Chahidi, Matthew Durkan, Clare Foster, Paul Hilton, Neil McCaul, Anneika Rose, with Michael Begley, Alexandra Hannant, Chris Jack and Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong, the MD is Harry Sever and the Director is Sasha Yevtushenko. Oddly, there is no Czech version of this one.

It was also a pick of the week in The Times.

THE TALL TALES EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM

Maybe we will return. We plan to, and maybe we will.