Sunderland writer's play to hit the airwaves as Glenda Jackson helps tell her story

Fiona Evans, from Mill Hill, is one of seven writers to create stories as part of the second series of Fault Lines: Money, Sex and Blood, first inspired by Emile Zola’s Rougon Macquart Stories.

Fiona’s contribution, Electricity, is also based on the Greek myth of Electra, with the series based on Glenda Jackson’s character Constance as she visits members of her extended family tree.

The 44-minute play, broadcast tomorrow, Friday, October 16, on Radio 4 at 2.15pm, tells the story of a mother and daughter living on an isolated sheep farm, where the electricity keeps failing.

When a stranger Jack arrives to help out, they see he has a likeness to one of their own family.

It also stars North East actor Charlie Hardwick, who has previously appeared in Emmerdale, alongside theatre actor Sally Mesham and Will Ash, who has featured in Soldier Soldier and Waterloo Road.

The project has seen Fiona build on the work she did on her PhD at Newcastle University called Radaptation: Adapting Ancient Greek tragedy in the Twenty-first Century, transforming the works into contemporary stories.

“To listen to Glenda Jackson act was just amazing,” said Fiona, who now lives on a horse-breeding farm in Kilmarnock in Scotland and is a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Strathclyde University.

"It’s amazing and just a privilege to write something that’s been interpreted by her, because she has such a wealth of experience, it’s a huge accolade, but to also have my friend Charlie in it as well, and all the cast were just fantastic.

"Because of Covid, I had to listen down the line, rather than be in the studio, so it’s been a different experience, but fun as well.”

Work in the pipeline for Fiona include an episode of BBC One daytime comedy-drama Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators, to be recorded next year.

She has previously worked with the parents of Seaham soldier Geoff Gray pas part of a series of plays about the death of four privates at the Deepcut Barracks and written for EastEnders, Holby City, Casualty, Doctors and Hollyoaks.

Electricity can be listed to via the BBC Radio 4 website following its broadcast.

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