Slow Air

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Drama on 4: Slow Air

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Love story about messages to the future, whispered in a Sicilian cave 32 years ago.

A love story about messages to the future, whispered in a Sicilian cave 32 years ago. Written by Dan Rebellato and featuring Forbes Masson, Ellie Turner and Michelle Bonnard.

A new drama all about love, memory and sound. Part of BBC Radio 4’s celebration of 100 years of  BBC Radio drama.

Slow Air is family drama with a science fiction twist about what we hear and what we don’t. A play of whispers and promises, signals from the past and to the future, Slow Air is a hymn to sending out messages, stories, secrets and sounds into the air and the joys and pains of listening and not listening. It is also about love. 

A curious geological formation in Sicily creates a thick funnel of slow air, through which sound takes 32 years to pass. A young couple on honeymoon in 1991, Paul and Zoe, visited the site and whispered their hopes for a future lived together, imagining themselves making a return trip in older age. But eight years later, Zoe died in a car accident. 

In 2023, Penny, their daughter, 26, tries to persuade Paul to return to the island of Stromboli. He doesn’t want to, it’s all too painful. When old flame Yvonne comes back into his life, things become more complicated. With Yvonne's unexpected  help, Penny persuades Paul to go back to hear what Zoe actually said. But will the message reach him?


The writer Dan Rebellato is a leading audio dramatist and professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway University. He has written 27 dramas for BBC Radio 4 and won or been shortlisted multiple times for Sony, BBC Audio and WGGB Awards. His Radio 4 drama You & Me won Silver at the ARIAS 2022. He was the lead writer who masterminded the 20 hour Emile Zola epic on Radio 4  from 2015 – 2016, and is working with Ben and Max Ringham on Exemplar series 2, starring Gina McKee and Shvorne Marks. He has had stage commissions for Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Plymouth Drum, Suspect Culture and Graeae, Soho Theatre and National Theatre.  

Cast
Paul…………………………………………….Forbes Masson
Penny………………………………………….Ellie Turner
Yvonne…………………………………………Michelle Bonnard
Susan/Assistant/Laura/Zoe…………..Sharan Phull
Michael/Aureliu/Gourmont………….Max Runham

		
Producer ………………………………..Polly Thomas
Sound Recordist………………………Alisdair McGregor
Studio Assistant………………………Jake Wittlin
Sound Designer………………………Eloise Whitmore 
Illustration……………………………....Ed Duffill
Production Manager……………….Darren Spruce
Executive Producer…………………..Eloise Whitmore

Written by Dan Rebellato

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