Mike Dorrell, dramaturge for Salt Lake Acting Company, returned from Britain last week after attending the recording of his new radio play, "Penny Gaffs and Angel Places," which was commissioned by the British Broadcasting Co.
It was taped in Cardiff, directed by Alison Hindell, and is scheduled to air in the United Kingdom in late April.
The hourlong play dramatizes a period of great personal crisis for Charles Dickens that occurred in 1858. At the time, Dickens was the most popular and successful novelist in England. The crisis finally ended with Dickens' scandalous separation from his wife, Catherine. The fact-based episode reveals lesser-known psychological tensions and contradictions that haunted the famous Victorian author. Dorrell's radio play was commissioned to coincide with a new serialization of "Little Dorrit."
This is the seventh play Dorrell has written for BBC Radio 4. Others include "Pictures of the Floating World" about Frank Lloyd Wright and "Change," which follows the fate of a young woman who emigrates from Wales in the 1850s only to end up in a polygamous marriage in Utah.
Dorrell is a native of Wales. He has lived in Salt Lake City since 1988. He has been associated with SLAC since 1993 and joined the company as full-time dramaturge in October 2000.