Come Closer Now [Drama On 3]

Katie Hims's love letter to radio drama as the form celebrates its centenary.

Annie is writing a radio play about a hundred years of radio plays, and it's also, curiously, the story of her own family. As she writes she unearths the myths, half-truths and lies that have been woven into her family's fabric for generations. Stories that are written to cope with uncomfortable facts. Stories that warp and twist reality. Stories stowed in the studio walls. Stories that crackle with electricity. Stories that move across space and time, and end up right in your ear, right in your head. Stories a bit like this one.

From gathering around the wireless to listening on-demand on headphones, the listener, and the medium, has transformed over the century. And across this sweep of time, radio drama has remained an innovative, yet deeply intimate art form, with infinite possibilities. It's often called the most visual medium there is.

CAST

Annie - .. Rebekah Staton

Farley - .. Joseph Kloska

Connie and Jane - .. Rhiannon Neads

Older Jane - .. Jessica Turner

Younger Jane - .. Maisie Avis

Dan - .. Don Gilet

Joe - .. Tyler Cameron

Michael - .. Josh Bryant-Jones

Nora - .. Kitty O'Sullivan

The Boy - .. Milton Dighton

Written by Katie Hims

Directed by Anne Isger

Sound by Ali Craig and Andy Garrett

Production Co-ordination by Jenny Mendez

A BBC Audio Production for BBC Radio 4

Katie Hims wrote her first play for radio in 1996, and has been writing extensively in the genre ever since, to great acclaim. Katie's play Waterloo Station was the winner of Best Radio Drama at the 2023 Writers Guild Awards. Her other original audio work includes Black Eyed Girls (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), Lost Property (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), The Gunshot Wedding (winner of The Writer's Guild Best Original Radio Drama). Katie was lead writer on BBC's Home Front and has written multiple leading adaptations for BBC Radio 4: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls and The Martin Beck Killings by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

In theatre, Katie is currently on attachment at the National Theatre. Her recent stage work includes a contemporary retelling of Kafka's The Trial which ran at The Unicorn Theatre in 2023 and received 4 and 5 star reviews.

A BBC Audio Production for BBC Radio 3

Katie Hims wrote her first play for radio in 1996, and has been writing extensively in the genre ever since, to great acclaim. Katie's play Waterloo Station was the winner of Best Radio Drama at the 2023 Writers Guild Awards. Her other original audio work includes Black Eyed Girls (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), Lost Property (winner of the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Original Drama), The Gunshot Wedding (winner of The Writer's Guild Best Original Radio Drama). Katie was lead writer on BBC's Home Front and has written multiple leading adaptations for BBC Radio 4: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'ubervilles, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls and The Martin Beck Killings by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.