New Play Will Celebrate 75 Years of Radio Soap Opera THE ARCHERS at the Barn Theatre

A new play, described as a "love letter" to the radio soap opera The Archers is coming to the stage in 2025. Haywire - A Not-So-Everyday Story Of The Archers How Was Born will premiere at the Barn Theatre in September. Performances will run 1 September - 11 October, 2025.

This new play, commissioned by The Barn and licensed by the BBC, to be performed ahead of the 75th anniversary year of The Archers, uses the magic of radio drama and invites you, the audience, to travel back with us to those halcyon days when the public gathered around their wireless to listen and lose themselves in the lives, trials, and tribulations of a fictional farming family.

During a cold British December in 1950, a small cohort of passionate actors gathered in a humble studio to record the first episode of what was to become one of Britain’s most iconic and longest-running radio programs. Now, 75 years later, this new play celebrates the widespread pride that this Radio 4 soap brought to the nation, as well as the enduring magic and power of radio drama.

Haywire is an endearing and funny celebration of one of Britain’s most beloved and enduring creations. This is a love letter to The Archers and the minds that made it happen – an exclusive peek behind the curtain of how a radio play is truly made.

About The Archers

The Archers is a British radio soap opera currently broadcast on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural setting". Having aired over 20,000 episodes, it is the world's longest-running present-day drama by number of episodes.

The first of five pilot episodes was aired on Whit Monday, 29 May 1950, on the BBC Midlands Home Service, and the first episode broadcast nationally went out on New Year's Day 1951. A significant show in British popular culture, and with over five million listeners, it is Radio 4's most listened-to non-news programme, and with over one million listeners via the internet, the programme holds the record for BBC Radio online listening figures. In February 2019, a panel of 46 broadcasting industry experts, of which 42 had a professional connection to the BBC, listed The Archers as the second-greatest radio programme of all time. Partly established with the aim towards educating farmers following World War II, The Archers soon became a popular source of entertainment for the population at large, attracting nine million listeners by 1953.

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