These four hour-long short plays, with songs, are set around the court of the amiable muffin-loving King Horace, his twin brother Tiresias who is the Royal Soothsayer, Horace's formidable second wife Queen Beatrice, and the Queen's sister, the even more formidable Bertha, who is a witch.
In each play, traditional fairy tales receive an unexpected and amusing re-working.
The plays are:
The Princess and the Toad
Beast
Rumplestiltskin and the Sleeping Beauty
Snow white and the Big Bad Wolf
Gordon House joined the BBC as a Studio Manager in 1972, and worked in Children's Television and Radio Sport, before becoming a drama director. He headed the small BBC World Service Drama team for fourteen years, during which time the Unit won over thirty national and international awards - many of them plays directed by Gordon himself. He initiated the World International Playwriting Competition for radio dramatists, run in conjunction with the British Council, and was responsible, with his colleague David Hitchinson, for the launch of BBC World Service's highly popular twice-weekly serial Westway set in a West London Health Centre. For five years he also wrote a monthly humorous column for the World Service magazine "BBC On Air" under the pseudonym "Nelson Mature".Gordon has twice adjudicated the National Theatre Awards in Zimbabwe; run Shakespeare workshops in Kenya and Uganda, been a guest lecturer on several occasions for the Radio Nederland overseas drama course and produced a Shakespeare revue for the Harare International Festival of Arts. He has directed a number of plays in conjunction with the Canadian Broadcasting Company and with LA Theatre Works, Los Angeles. In 1998 he won the Writers' Guild Special Prize for services for his work with new writers, and two years later won the Sony Drama Award for best drama with his World Service production of Alpha by Mike Walker. He was a founder member, and ex-Chair, of The WORLDPLAY GROUP a radio association of drama directors from broadcasting stations around the world.In April 2001 he became Head of BBC Radio Drama, a post which he held until his retirement from the BBC in March 2005. He was a judge at Prix Italia and Prix Europa conventions, and his tenure as Head culminated in the Department winning its largest ever number of awards in a single year. Since retiring from the BBC, Gordon freelances as a producer, teacher and drama consultant. He has taught Radio Drama and run Radio Masterclasses at (amongst others) ALRA, Arts Ed, Bristol, Central, Drama Studio, East 15, Rose Bruford and RWCMD. He was a drama consultant in Guyana for the Aids-based soap Opera, Merundoi and continues to produce prize-winning radio plays for the BBC; Come to Grief won a "Best Adaptation" BBC Audio Award; Goldfish Girl by Peter Souter won both a Sony and a Tinniswood award, while Sir Ian McKellen won The Audio Award for Best Actor in Gordon's production of Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, dramatised by Rose Tremain. In 2010 Gordon was voted Radio Academy Radio Drama Producer of the Year. Gordon has more recently written and directed four family pantomimes staged at Colour House Theatre in Merton. He directed a radio play for the BBC in 2024 - Rumpelstiltskin's Radio Drama Romance - about a radio producer's hapless attempt to direct one of these plays as a Radio 4 Drama. Gordon is married with two children, and three grandchildren. When not working, he plays golf - very badly.... He was the Centenary Captain of Wimbledon Common Golf Club in 2008 and is currently Vice-President of the club, and Secretary of their Senior Section the WAGGS - the Wimbledon Ageless Gentlemen Golfers.
