Ronald Mason (drama)
Radio plays

Ronald Mason (drama)

Section Title: Radio plays
Table Section Text: None

Radio plays directed or produced by Ronald Mason

Date first broadcast	Play	Author	Cast	Synopsis Awards	Station Series

16 January 1958	A Sort of Freedom	Brian Friel	Harold Goldblatt, Doreen Hepburn, Wolsey Gracey, Ann Maguire, Colin Blakely, Eleanor McFadzean, Charlie Witherspoon	Recorded Sunday, 12 January 1958	BBC Northern Ireland Home Service

24 April 1958	To This Hard Place	Brian Friel	William Hunter, Irene Bingham, Patricia Calderwood, William McKay Kenny, Myrtle Douglas, Michael Baguley	Recorded Sunday, 20 April 1958	BBC Northern Ireland Home Service

5 January 1959	The Whiteheaded Boy	Lennox Robinson	Nita Hardie, Maurice O'Callaghan, John Reid, Irene Bingham, Margaret D’Arcy, Kathleen Feenan, Denys Hawthorne, Elizabeth Begley, James Ellis, Patrick Magee, Eileen Madden and Ann Maguire	The Geoghegans are prosperous shop-keepers in an Irish country town. Denis, the youngest of the family, is his mother's darling and nothing is too good for him.	BBC Home Service

15 November 1960	The Old House	Maurice Leitch	J. G. Devlin, Gertrude Russell, James Ellis, Catherine Gibson and Maurice O'Callaghan	An old couple living in a tied country cottage are visited by their son from Belfast who has come to persuade them to move to his house in the city before they are evicted.	BBC Radio Northern Ireland Home Service

9 September 1963	The Enemy Within	Brian Friel	Ray McAnally, Will Leighton, J. G.	A drama about the Patron Saint of Derry, St. Columba of the sixth century A.D., which Friel describes as neither a history nor a biography but an imaginative account of the voluntary exile of St.	BBC Home Service

9 March 1964	The Founder Members	Brian Friel	George Merritt, James Thomason, John Baddeley, John Ruddock, Mary O'Farrell, Isabel Rennie and Jo Manning Wilson	Just Before Midnight; A fifteen-minute play in a nightly series.	BBC Light Programme

13 April 1964	The Blind Mice	Brian Friel	John McBride, Gertrude Russell, Donal Donnelly, Denys Hawthorne, Kathleen Feenan, Desmond Perry, Patrick McAlinney, James Greene, John Ruddock, Fraser Kerr and Catherine Gibson	Father Chris Carroll returns home to his family after five years in a Chinese Communist prison. His sister's boyfriend reveals a devastating secret.	BBC Home Service

25 February 1965	Philadelphia, Here I Come!	Brian Friel	Donal Donnelly, Patrick Magee, J. G.	Philadelphia awaits Gar O'Donnell tomorrow. But tonight he says goodbye: to an inarticulate father, to a few friends, to an old teacher.	BBC Third Programme

4 January 1965	Over the Bridge	Sam Thompson	J. G.	The landmark Belfast play, first performed in 1960 following its controversial cancellation by the Ulster Group Theatre in the middle of rehearsal in 1959: Set in the Belfast shipyards in the 1950s, with the IRA's Border campaign underway, a simple trade union dispute develops into dangerous sectarian strife.	BBC Home Service

22 July 1965	The Countess Cathleen	W.B. Yeats, adapted for broadcasting by W.R. Rodgers	Eithne Dunne, Ray McAnally, Eamonn Keane, R. H.	And starving men walk the fields on sticks And strike their sticks into the staggering ground As they fall, to mark their fall, till all the land Cries out with exclamation marks How will it end except in devilry	BBC Third Programme

29 November 1965	The Evangelist	Sam Thompson Adapted for broadcasting by Sam Hanna Bell	Ray McAnally, J. G.	An American evangelist comes to sectarian Belfast to revive the Faith and encounters a self-confessed agnostic who fights to prevent a young man from being caught up in fanatical religiosity.	BBC Northern Ireland Home Service

9 August 1966	The Loves of Cass McGuire.	Brian Friel	Siobhán McKenna, Sybil Thorndike, Mary O'Farrell, Carleton Hobbs, Liam Redmond, Peter Mayock, Sheelagh Cullen, Patrick McAlinney, Peggy Marshall and Shela Ward	As children we dream of the future – dreams without boundaries. In old age we dream of the past-a selective reconstructed past and we are kept living between innocence and senility by loving and being loved-or the illusions of loving and being loved.	BBC Third Programme

15 June 1967	Between the Two of Us	Rhys Adrian	Betty Hardy, Noel Hood, Anna Cropper, Alec McCowen, Ingrid Bower. Nigel Anthony, Leroy Lingwood, Ian Thompson and Brian Hewlett	' What am I supposed to do? ...	BBC Third Programme

16 March 1968	The Fallen Idol	Graham Greene, adapted from the film story by Charles Hatton	Richard Pasco, Rachel Gurney, Judi Dench, Jean England, Peter Baldwin, Geoffrey Wincott, Rolf Lefebvre, Gudrun Ure, Beth Boyd, Nicholas Edmett, David Brierley, Victor Lucas, Barbara Mitchell, Lockwood West, Michael Deacon, and John Wyse	Recorded Thursday, 14 March 1968. Adapted from the film The Fallen Idol, written by Greene and directed by Carol Reed, which was an adaptation of Greene's short story "The Basement Room" (1936).	BBC Radio 4 (though listed on the script as BBC Home Service)

14 April 1968	Winners	Brian Friel	Fionnula Flanagan, Jim Norton, Denys Hawthorne and Marjorie Westbury	First broadcast: ' The past's over! And I hate this waiting time!	BBC Radio 3

26 September 1968	Ella	Rhys Adrian	Brenda Bruce, Peter Jeffrey and Maurice Denham	A Comedy by Rhys Adrian: ' Choose wisely, my dear.' ' But I've already chosen. Ages ago.	BBC Radio 3

17 March 1969	Becket	Jean Anouilh, Adapted for radio by Roger Pine, from the translation by Lucienne Hill	Ian Holm, David Buck, Peter Jeffrey, Patricia Gallimore, Geoffrey Wincott, Garard Green, Antony Vicars, Ralph Truman, Roger Gale, Marjorie Westbury, Kathleen Helme, David Brierley, David March, Peter Pratt and John Baddeley.	' Sire. crush them now, or in five years', time there will be two Kings in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury and you.	BBC Radio 4 World Theatre

1 May 1969	Total Eclipse	Christopher Hampton	Derek Godfrey, Kenneth Cranham, Gwen Watford, Marjorie Westbury, Rosalind Shanks, Haydn Jones, Kathleen Helme, David March, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Pratt, Leonard Fenton and Barbara Mitchell	' My search for universal experience has led me here. To lead an idle, pointless life of poverty, as the minion of a bald, ugly, ageing, drunken lyric poet, who Clings on to me because his wife won'take him back.' Derek Godfrey as Verlaine and Kenneth Cranham as Rimbaud.	BBC Radio 3

6 June 1969	L'Amante anglaise	Marguerite Duras (translated by Barbara Bray)	Gwen Watford, Robert Eddison and Sean Barrett	Railway trunks throughout France had yielded up parts of a woman's body. The police traced the source to a single intersection at Viorne and the district soon produced its anatomist.	BBC Radio 3

12 December 1969	Long Day's Journey Into Night	Eugene O'Neill	Irene Worth, Patrick Magee, Neil McCallum, Robert Howay and Jan Edwards.	' How can you understand, when I don't myself. I've never understood anything about It, except that one day long ago I found I could no longer call my soul my own.	BBC Radio 3

20 March 1970	L’Impomptu de l'Alma, or, The Shepherd's Chameleon	Eugène Ionesco, translated by Sasha Moorsom	Anthony Jacobs, Denys Blakelock, Francis de Wolff, Grizelda Hervey and Donal Donnelly (as Ionesco)	' The experience of an artist can, at any moment, be endangered by the preconceived ideas of fanatical pedants. These dogmatic and narrow-minded people will always be the greatest menace to the creative artist.'	BBC Radio 3

23 November 1977	The Duck Variations	David Mamet	Cyril Shaps and Harry Towb	Mamet describes his play as Opus 10 – a piece with 14 variations on the theme of the duck. The scene is a park in a large North American city overlooking a great lake, where two old men are passing the time of day.	BBC Radio 3

18 February 1979	Heaven Scent	Barrie Keeffe	Nigel Anthony, Harold Kasket, John Hollis, Bill Monks, Renu Setna and Eva Stuart	A play in the Just Before Midnight series: Bob wakes up one morning and parked outside his house he finds a juggernaut containing a vast quantity of scent.	BBC Radio 4

10 October 1982	Flos	David Pownall, Music composed directed by Stephen Boxer	Michael Williams, Robert Eddison, Mike Gwilym and Peter Vaughan. Musicians: Michael Chance, Ashley Stafford (altos), Phillip Salmon, John Potter (tenors), Richard Wistreich, Simon Grant (basses).	Commissioned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the BBC: In 1216 King John Is dying, his kingdom fraught with war and Intrigue.	BBC Radio 3

31 October 1982	Ill Seen, Ill Said	Samuel Beckett	Patrick Magee	A monologue for radio. ‘y recalling the last months of the life of an old lady encased in a frail body, we come to have a perception of the end of life and the meaning of what has come and gone to bring us to this point.	BBC Radio 3

18 April 1986	A Piece of Monologue	Samuel Beckett	Ronald Pickup	‘Beckett at 80’: The first broadcast of A Piece of Monologue: ‘Nothing stirs anywhere. Nothing to be seen anywhere.	BBC Radio 3 -->

Sentence(s)

Mason produced and directed Friel's plays, A Sort of Freedom (16 January 1958) and To This Hard House (24 April 1958), for the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service on radio.

final_sentence: Mason produced and directed Friel's plays, A Sort of Freedom (16 January 1958) and To This Hard House (24 April 1958), for the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service on radio.