On a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1936, a woman accidentally interrupts an attempted murder in a London hotel room. Nina Land, a West End actress, faces a dilemma. She's not supposed to be at the hotel in the first place, and certainly not with a married man - the celebrated portrait artist, Stephen Wyley - but once it becomes apparent that she may have seen the face of the man dubbed 'the Tie-Pin Killer' she realises that another woman's life could be at stake.

Jimmy Erskine is the raffish doyen of theatre critics who fears that his star is fading. Age and drink are catching up with him and, in his late-night escapades with young men, he walks a tightrope that may snap at any moment. He has depended for years on his loyal and longsuffering secretary Tom, who has a secret of his own to protect. Tom's chance encounter with Madeleine Farewell, a lonely young woman haunted by premonitions of catastrophe, closes the circle - it was Madeleine who narrowly escaped the killer's stranglehold that afternoon and now she walks the streets in terror of him finding her again.

Curtain Call is a poignant comedy of manners, and a tragedy of mistaken intentions. From the glittering murk of Soho's demi-monde to the grease paint and ghost-lights of theatreland, the story plunges on through smoky clubrooms, street corners where thuggish Blackshirts linger and tawdry rooming houses.

Read by Nancy Carroll

Abridged, directed and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4. Show less