Utopia

Michael Symmons Roberts’ full-cast dramatisation of Thomas More’s classic work, plus an accompanying documentary exploring its legacy

Thomas More's classic work of speculative fiction, Utopia, was published over 500 years ago, yet has entered the culture so deeply that the name of his fictional island is still how we refer to our hopes and dreams of a better society. This immersive dramatisation is adapted by the award-winning poet and author Michael Symmons Roberts, and is paired with a documentary programme that further explores More’s iconic book.

In Utopia, a full cast brings to life More's strange and enchanting island. More travels to Antwerp, to sort out a dispute in the commercial wool trade. While he is there, he meets an old man who is clearly widely travelled. When More complains about the petty politics of the trade dispute, the stranger says he has seen another way of living. He introduces himself as the adventurer Raphael Hythloday, and describes a thrilling journey exploring an unmapped part of the ocean, discovering an island society unlike any seen before. The island is called ‘Utopia’... Starring Raad Rawi as Raphael Hythloday, Nacho Aldeguer as the young Raphael, and Michael Peavoy as Thomas More.

In the accompanying documentary, Utopias, Michael Symmons Roberts examines the book’s intellectual legacy. It generated an idea that has been hotly contested throughout the hundreds of years since its release; a slippery tale that blurs fact and fiction and which has left readers trying to fathom whether More was presenting the island of Utopia as a model society or as a salutary tale. He also eavesdrops on figures from the BBC archives describing what their personal Utopias might look like – including Tony Benn, Jeanette Winterson, Aldous Huxley, Nawal El Saadawi and Iain Banks.

Michael Symmons Roberts is an award-winning poet, author and dramatist. His poetry book Corpus won the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize. In 2007 he received the Arts Council Writers Award. He was elected a Fellow of the English Association in 2012 and in 2014 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has worked with composer James MacMillan for the BBC Proms and won awards for his radio adaptations of His Fearful Symmetry and Soldiers in the Sun.

Cast and credits

Utopia
Written by Thomas More
Adapted by Michael Symmons Roberts
Directed by Susan Roberts
Raphael Hythloday - Raad Rawi
Young Raphael - Nacho Aldeguer
Thomas More / Achorian - Michael Peavoy
Peter Giles - Cameron Blakeley
Abraxa - Emily Pithon
Barzanes - Jonathan Keeble
Macaria - Fiona Clarke
First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24 January 2016

Utopias
Presented by Michael Symmons Roberts
Produced by Geoff Bird
First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 23 January 2016

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