Six Characters in Search of an Author & other plays: Three Full-Cast BBC Radio Productions

Four plays by the award-winning Italian playwright and innovator Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello was an Italian playwright, novelist, and short-story writer and winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature. In the first performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author, an enraged Rome theatre audience yelled abuse at the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello and chased him out of the theatre. Since then, the play has gained iconic status as a piece of theatre which helped move Western culture into modernity. This stunning, full-cast collection of the playwright’s most famous plays performed for radio is not to be missed.

Six Characters in Search of an Author - Luigi Pirandello's famous 1921 play about the nature of theatre and the problems of theatricality, in which six characters, whose author has abandoned them mid-process, turn up at a rehearsal and demand to be played by the actors present to resolve their tragedy and become ‘real’. This contrast between art, which is unchanging, and life, which is in constant flux, is classic Pirandello.

The Rules of the Game - Set in an Italian town in 1919. Leone and Silia, man and wife, live apart, and Guido is Silia's lover. There is an uncanny lack of jealousy on Leone's part, for he seems a man without any emotional cares whatever - to him it is all a game. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a dangerous game...

Henry IV - A madman is shut up in a villa in Italy following an accident at a carnival. Twenty years later his friends come to visit him. Is he still mad, or is he sane? What is madness? What is sanity? This compelling production explores what lies just underneath the skin of ordinary life, starring Martin Jarvis and Andrew Sachs.

First Night is an adaptation of Pirandello’s 1900 short story narrated by Mary Wimbush (Poldark, Jeeves and Wooster, The Archers). It tells the story of Marastella, a young Sicilian bride who is unhappily married off to a much older man and explores convention, desire and fate.

Rounding off this curated collection we hear a bonus edition of The Forum, presented by Rajan Datar. On the centenary of the infamous premiere of Pirandello’s Six Characters, he asks: But what of the author? He was a complex figure who found inspiration from his wife’s madness as well as the actors he worked with. Datar is joined by celebrated academics and experts in this enigmatic and culture phenomenon.

This star-studded collection is perfect for any fans of Pirandello or anyone wanting to dive deeper into a genre defining era of twentieth century theatre and the man behind it.

Cast and credits Written by Luigi Pirandello

Six Characters in Search of an Author Daughter - Cherie Lunghi Father - Emerald James

The Rules of the Game Leone - Robert Rietty Silia - Sarah Badel Guido - Francis Matthews Clara - Wendy Fisher Marquis Miglioriti - James Goode First drunk - Anthony Morse Second drunk - Ken Cumberlidge Third drunk - Haydn Andrews Philip - Brian Hewlett Dr Spiga - Stephen Hattersley Barelli - Eric Stovell

Henry IV Henry IV - Alec McCowan Tito Belcredi - George Baker Doctor Genoni - Maurice Denham Matilda Spina - Pauline Letts Landolph - Martin Jarvis Ordulph - Henry Knowles Charles di Nolli - Sean Arnold Frida, his fiancee - Janet Chappell Berthold - David Spenser Harold - Nigel Lambert John - James Thomason The two servants - Harvey Edwards & Andrew Sachs

First Night Narrator - Mary Wimbush

The Forum Presented by Rajan Datar Readings by Marco Gambino With: Guido Bonsaver, Dr Enza de Francisci, Patricia Gaborik

©2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

© 2026 BBC Digital Audio (Lydbog): 9781529986433

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 23. juli 2026