In The Odyssey there is a moving episode in which Odysseus goes into the Underworld to meet the shades of dead luminaries. He also sees his mother, and realises she has died since he left home. He tries repeatedly to embrace her, but as she is a spirit, cannot.

In McCarthy Woolf's poem, written throughout in rhyming couplets, the story takes place in a portacabin in a port, and in a minicab. Here the mother, Cleo, who died soon after giving birth to her son, Valentine, is trying to make contact with him. Valentine is a cabbie on a night shift, and his controller on the radio has godlike power. But there is strange interference, on the radio and even his passenger's mobile phone.

Karen McCarthy Woolf is Cleo; Samuel James is Angel and Valentine and Maeve Bluebell Wells plays the Passenger.

Producer: Julian May. Show less