Hanging
by Kay Adshead
Approx. 56 minutes
A radio play. In a wood beside a railway line, a man is found hanging from a tree — and three very different women, each shaped by an unresolved relationship with him, claim him as their own.
In a wood by a railway line, a man's body is discovered hanging from a tree. Three women — Annie Small, Annie Smart and Annie Sharp — each claim the dead man as theirs, and each carries a relationship with him that was never resolved in life. Moving between the women's present and their younger selves, the play traces first sexual feelings and their confusing consequences across a lifetime, the inability to let go of love, and the struggle towards atonement and resolution.
Hanging was written for radio and broadcast in BBC Radio 4's Friday Play strand — the station's 9pm slot for a single hour-long drama. The production was directed by Lisa Goldman, with an original saxophone score by Andy Sheppard. The casting doubles two of the three women with their younger selves, so the play's excavation of the past happens audibly, in two voices per life.