A break from theatre rescued from pandemic obscurity by BBC TV, for some theatre rescued from pandemic obscurity by BBC radio:
Folk had been commissioned by Hampstead Theatre and was presumably due to have been staged by now, but instead it gets an audio outing as part of Radio 3's drama strand. Sadly this doesn't feature
a spoon-playing nun but it
does feature spoon-playing, as like the Tom Wells play of the same name the
Folk in Nell Leyshon's play is folk music. It's inspired by the story of the man credited with recording English folk songs for posterity, composer Cecil Sharp (Simon Russell Beale,) and the woman who first inspired him, Louie Hooper (Amanda Lawrence.) Living in rural Somerset with her sister Lucy (Amanda Wilkin,) the two have just buried their mother in 1903 when Sharp arrives to spend a week at a local manor house, and Louie gets volunteered as a housemaid for him to make some extra cash.
