Samuel West set for directorial debut on radio

Samuel West set for directorial debut on radio

Thursday 2 June 2011 

Samuel West will make his radio directorial
debut on Radio 3

Samuel West will make his radio directorial debut with a new adaptation of Money by  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a production forming part of a Radio 3 season of plays called Money Talks.

The season, which focuses on plays that tackle money as their subject matter, will also feature works by George Bernard Shaw and Caryl Churchill, with stars including Charles Dance, Ian McKellen, Celia Imrie and Tim Pigott-Smith lined up to perform.
West’s production of Money has been recorded on location at Knebworth House, which was Bulwer-Lytton’s stately home.
It stars Roger Allam, Ian McDiarmid and Imrie and will be broadcast on June 19. The work has been adapted for radio by Kate Clanchy.
Churchill’s play Serious Money will kick off the season on June 12. It is timed, says Radio 3, as Britain battles the “after effects of the banking crisis, recession and public debt”. Her work was debuted in the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crash.
Bernard Shaw’s first staged play, Widowers’ Houses, completes the line up on July 3. This will star Pigott-Smith and Dance, alongside McKellen and Honeysuckle Weeks. It is directed by Martin Jarvis and will be broadcast on July 3.
Radio 3 head of speech Matthew Dodd said: “Radio 3 commissioned the season because, at a time of economic uncertainty, we wanted to offer audiences a chance to hear how playwrights over the past 160 years have brilliantly tackled some of the never-changing issues of human behaviour when money is involved.”