The Company of Wolves

It's Christmas Eve, and a young girl is on her way to visit her granny in the forest.

She’s been warned not to stray from the path, but on her way, she meets a charming huntsman who has other ideas.

The last of Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories - dramatised by Olivia Hetreed.

Wise Woman …. Adjoa Andoh
Bawdy Woman …. Susan Wooldridge
Pushy Woman …. Tessa Wojtczak
Red …. Lily Lesser
Huntsman …. Alexander Vlahos
Granny …. Phyllida Law
Girl …. Grace Englert
Girl …. Jalleh Alizadeh

At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Angela Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider’s point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.

With their feisty heroines and orgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, Carter’s extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.

Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.

Director: Fiona McAlpine

An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in September 2018.