Cigarettes and Chocolate radioplay with Bill Nighy

If you previously missed Anthony Minghella’s award winning radio play with Bill Nighy it is now repeated.

Gemma’s unexplained silence is the catalyst for a reaction amongst her friends and lovers both unfaithful and unrequited, which starts as mild irritation but becomes increasingly uncontrolled as her passive but forceful refusal to speak drives them to distraction. Juliet Stevenson and Bill Nighy play Gemma’s friend and lover.

The play (starring a very youthful-sounding Bill Nighy and Juliet Stevenson) begins with everyone leaving messages on Gemma’s answer phone in the hope that at some point she will pick up the receiver and talk to them. But she resists the temptation, withdrawing utterly from her circle, pretending not to hear or take in what they are telling her, and turning instead for solace to music, in the hope of finding something profound within the harmonies of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

But of course her wilful silence provokes everyone around her into verbal diarrhoea, especially Rob, her none-too-reliable lover (no prizes for guessing who took that role), and her friend Lorna (played by Stevenson), who has been having an affair with Rob. Not until the very end do we hear from Gemma, who we discover has decided to give up talking for Lent (’Last year it was cigarettes. The year before chocolate. But this is the best’).

She has chosen to escape into silence, to start looking for what is within that silence, to realise just how words have become our first punishment, a Babel, an excuse for not thinking.

(Source: spectator.co.uk)

If you live outside the UK you can listen to Cigarettes and Chocolate on BBC Worldservice.

If you live in the UK, you can hear Cigarettes and Chocolate on BBC iPlayer.

It’s probably of limited availability so don’t miss you chance to hear it.