Even regular listeners to Radio 4’s The Archers can balk at the laborious annual plotline of Lynda Snell’s amateur dramatic production in Ambridge. So the BBC’s licensing of a spin-off stage play to mark January’s 75th anniversary of the farming drama raised fears of a Snelly cavalcade of arch jokes for superfans.
In fact, Haywire – written by Tim Stimpson, author of almost 500 Archers scripts – is, across the length of eight radio episodes, a smart drama with a strong sense of broadcasting and social history.
The conceit is that, in 2025, Jonty, a BBC Ambridge lover with ambitions to edit The Archers (the real current incumbent, Jeremy Howe, was in the audience) gilds his CV by making an afternoon play about the show’s early history from late 1940s conception through 1951 launch to the 1955 immolation of a major character to stymie the opening night of the BBC’s first commercial rival, ITV.
Jonty’s cast includes Adrian (Kieran Brown) as Godfrey “God” Baseley, the show’s creator, and Abbie (Olivia Bernstone) playing Ysanne Churchman, a brief early series heroine as Grace Archer.
Directed by Joseph O’Malley (a distant descendant of Baseley), the play is as neatly and deeply layered as a hay bale. The main cast play the actor contracted by Jonty now, then their impersonations of a 1950s actor/character which, in some scenes, becomes a period recreation of the “real” past, with some lip-syncing as well to actual vintage episodes. If Lynda Snell ever attempted such meta-drama, she would need tranquillisers from Dr Malik at Darrington surgery.
The intricacies demand (fittingly for a tribute to radio) some extraordinary voice acting, as the cast darts between their characters’ 2025 actor accent and the on-air and off-air tones of a 1950s cast member. These can be enjoyably different, suddenly jumping from Brummie to plummy or street now to Borsetshire then.
Yet another level makes Adrian the former lead in a forgotten TV detective franchise and Abbie a current screen soap star with millions of X followers and pursuant paparazzi, permitting Stimpson intriguing parallels: the first Archers cast – drawing to radio the sort of audiences (20 million) that EastEnders achieved at its peak – are shown as prototype media celebrities, with personal appearances amid public hysteria.
The result is a behind-the-mic farce, a homage to Michael Frayn’s backstage classic Noises Off in which part of the enjoyment is the creation of noises on by “spot effects” studio manager Jessica, superbly played by Geebs Marie Williams with a combination of aural show and tell – the use of slopping yoghurt to suggest the birth canal of a lambing ewe – and a silent movie range of facial expressions.
The first night audience clearly included aficionados – joining in with the theme tune – but Haywire, though loving to its source, has enough general pleasures to be liked by everyday folk around the country.