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Dramatisation of the Pulitzer winning book by Michael Cunningham inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Starring Rosamund Pike, Fenella Woolgar and Teresa Gallagher.

Three very separate women. They live in different locations and different eras but they are bound by their passion for Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. As they experience life on a Tuesday in June, their thoughts and experiences echo each other and become intertwined.

In Richmond in 1923, Virginia Woolf (Fenella Woolgar) sits down to write a novel calling her heroine Mrs Dalloway. In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura (Teresa Gallagher) sits in bed reading Mrs Dalloway. In New York in the 1990s, Clarissa (Rosamund Pike) goes out to buy flowers for a party mirroring the start of the day for the fictional Mrs Dalloway. The party is for her best friend Richard who long ago dubbed her Mrs Dalloway.

Weaving together themes of bisexuality, mental illness, middle age, the trials of creativity, parental guilt, marital discord, suburban isolation, infertility, friendship and loss - the three stories become one.

In the first episode, the women go about their day. Virginia is struggling to write in Richmond where she feels banished but is cheered by a visit from her sister. Laura has domestic tasks and a small son to look after but all she wants to do is read, and Clarissa struggles to prepare for a huge party in honour of her friend Richard but she's worried that he is so sick. Each finds a way to make it through to the afternoon of the same day in June.

Michael Cunningham's enormously popular and critically successful book won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and inspired the film starring Nicole Kidman. He called his story The Hours because that was a title that Virginia Woolf had considered. He says Mrs Dalloway was a huge influence on his life because he read the novel as a response to a dare when he was 15 and then decided to be a writer.

Sony Award winning writer Frances Byrnes adapted the book for radio.

Cast:
Virginia/Kitty ….. Fenella Woolgar
Laura .... Teresa Gallagher
Dan/Walter .... Corey Johnson
Richie …. Jack Towbin
Clarissa …. Rosamund Pike
Vanessa/Sally …. Lia Williams
Leonard/Louis …. David Annen
Nelly …. Rachel Atkins
Julia …. Haley McGee
Other voices by Sydney Beveridge and Josh Wakesberg

Composer: Gene Pritsker
Pianist: Carollyn Eden
Sound Design: Steve Bond

Adapted for radio by Frances Byrnes
Directed by Judith Kampfner and Polly Thomas
Produced by Judith Kampfner

A Corporation For Independent Media production

First broadcast on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4 in 2017.

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