Afternoon Play Goldfish Girl

(4 stars; 2 reviews)

Afternoon Play: Goldfish Girl By Peter Souter. Joe can remember everything about Ally, the love of his life for ten years. Ally, however, can remember nothing about Joe. Joe...............................................Alex Jennings Ally...........................................Juliet Stevenson From the Radio Times The award for perfect casting goes this week to director Gordon House in his selection of Juliet Stevenson to play Ally, an amnesiac who struggles to find the word "hedgehog", let alone nail down the events that preceded her arrival in hospital. Stevenson gets to be smart, dry and funny one moment, but then, in a flicker of her intravenous drip, she's a screeching bedlamite with a voice so piercing it must surely have aroused some of her fellow patients from their comas. All the while her husband, Joe, played in a complementary understated style by Alex Jennings, is working with her to reel in the memories and words that keep bobbing up to the surface of her mind. And this watery metaphor is entirely apt, for we learn that the couple once lived happily together on a houseboat. It would utterly spoil the dramatic tension of this play to reveal what is making Ally scream at her husband, but it is definitely worth following this one through to its desperately sad end.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.