The Shadow

Available for over a year

In new after hours listening on Radio 4, the team behind the award-winning Wireless Nights present three acoustically rich journeys through three long nights of the soul. Nights that left an indelible mark on the storyteller. Time stretches out in the early hours. The space between sleep and wakefulness is alive with possibility. Fears and anxieties are projected in lurid hues, distorted, outsized. Dreams fade in and out. The real and the imaginary blur. Over three programmes, we’ll enter that space with three artistic individuals: writer Zakiya McKenzie, sound designer Axel Kacoutié and actor Jonathan Forbes. Each have selected a Night Vision that has never left them. Ep 1: Composer and sound designer Axel Kacoutié returns to a sleepless night from his youth, recovering from a heartbreak and forced to look at himself closely in the mirror. Fortunately, he wasn’t alone. With Bram Stoker’s Dracula as bedtime listening he finds a companion in the solicitor Jonathan Harker in the Count’s castle. Both are trapped. But there has to be some way out. Words and Sound Design by Axel Kacoutié The actress was Tamara Fairbairn Jonathan Harker was played by Michael Harbour Producer Neil McCarthy