Radio Review: The Boy At The Back / Chiwawa / Silk: The Clerks’ Room, Jake

"Literature doesn't teach us anything"

Juan Mayorga’s The Boy At The Back turned out to be one of my favourite radio dramas that I’ve listened to this year so far. A canny choice for producer/director Nicolas Jackson as Mayorga is one of Spain’s most highly renowned contemporary writers (which makes me a little sad that this is the first I’ve heard of him) and this play proved to be a most effective psychological drama as a precocious pupil and deluded teacher play out a dangerously voyeuristic pas-de-deux that threatens many people around them.

By comparison, Melissa Murray’s Chiwawa might have felt a little bit tame, but its tale of a self-important author trolling around on the internet, leaving anonymous reviews slagging off his rival’s work and bigging up his own, has a deliciously biting contemporary feel. Michael Bertenshaw’s writer is lots of pompous fun but the real joy comes from Fenella Woolgar as his manipulative wife and current RSC darling Pippa Nixon as the PA she forces to shoulder the blame for the mishaps, with unpredictable consequences.

And last up is the first of three short plays that are extending the life of the recently departed Silk, looking at life in the clerks’ room through the eyes of three of the juniors who works there. This one, written by Mick Collins, focused on Jake but I wasn’t much of a fan to be honest, not helped by the strong memories of a disappointing third series and a nagging sense that there’s not really much purpose at hand here.

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