ANTIQUE SILVER

But I am here. 
​Far in the centre. 
​Lost behind the blinds. 
​Shocked to the mind, and drunk to the world.

Antique Silver is a speculative account of the life of Victor Grayson, the radical left-wing Labour MP, who won the Colne Valley seat in 1907 in the teeth of a disapproving Labour hierarchy. A great orator with a troubled private life, he was widely tipped as a future Labour leader. Then, one day in 1920, he walked out of his house and was never seen again. I thought there was something in Grayson’s story that suggested a one-man history of British socialism.

This play tells an episodic story of his life, up to the disappearance, paralleling the investigation with the imagined progress of Grayson who has jumped into the Thames and is swimming out to sea. The play ends many years later in an antique shop where nothing is for sale.

Victor Grayson was played by Glenn Cunningham, Detective Inspector Appleby by Dan Armour, Longwood and Cartwright by James Quinn, Jones and Copeland by Russell Dixon, Brandon and Elizabeth Grayson by Esther Wilson, and Miss Lane and Jess Brandon by Christine Mackie. Original music was composed by James Mackie. The play was directed by Polly Thomas as BBC Manchester.

You can listen to Antique Silver below.