The Stage

Godley to star in Jones’ Radio 3 play about man who fakes amnesia

Published Tuesday 11 November 2008 at 13:50 by Matthew Hemley

Humble Boy writer Charlotte Jones has penned a new play for BBC Radio 3 about a man who fakes memory loss to help him rebuild his life.

In the Absence of Geoff stars Adam Godley - currently appearing in Rain Man in the West End - as a 40-year-old man whose marriage is failing and who is despised by his own daughter.

The play, one of Radio 3’s highlights for the early part of next year, sees Geoff fake total memory loss in a bid to make a new start.

Other highlights for Radio 3’s January schedule include a new work by Mike Bartlett, which is called The Steps and stars Geraldine McEwan, and an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, The Deep Blue Sea, which recently ran in the West End with Greta Scacchi in the leading role.

Radio 3’s schedule also includes a radio version of Simon Stephens’ Pornography, which made its UK debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2008 and centres on the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks in London, and Echoes of War by Gary Mitchell, a new play about the “loose ends left by the Good Friday agreement”,

Finally, Alone Together, by Neil McKay, is a play inspired by Byron Roger’s biography, The Man Who Went into the West, about the marriage and lives of poet RS Thomas and his wife artist Elsi Eldridge.

All the plays will be broadcast between January 4 and February 15 next year.