Episode 1

Michael Frayn: the most comic philosophical writer of our time.

An all-star cast has great fun with Frayn's hilarious view of us all. And of how we attempt to communicate.

In this opening episode, we hear Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam as stone effigies in a cathedral talking to each other like an old married couple. (Well, they've been together several hundred years. Nothing much changes.)

Then there's the younger couples - Charles Edwards and Sophie Winkleman bickering over who should finish who's sentences, and Lisa Dillon and Alex Jennings on the irritations that occur when discussing an apparently simple decision - whether or not to accept a kind invitation.

Martin Jarvis has trouble with a rarefied type of cold-calling - how to tell someone they've won a Nobel Prize. And we have an excerpt from a documentary on a species of creature that scurries and scuttles in the darkness. The wild life narrator sounds suspiciously like Sir David Attenborough. (It is.)

This series is Theatre in miniature. Short entertainments based on Frayn's acclaimed book, Matchbox Theatre. It’s the theatre of your imagination. Set design, ice-cream sales, packet of nuts, where to sit - it's up to you. Just sit back and enjoy.

With
Charles Edwards
Sophie Winkleman
Joanna Lumley
Roger Allam,
Lisa Dillon
Alex Jennings
David Attenborough
Martin Jarvis

Producer: Rosalind Ayres
Director: Martin Jarvis

A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in November 2015.