Michael Butt




I am unable to find any information on Michael Butt! If you have any background on this prolific playwright, please email me.

Many thanks to Peter P for contributions to this page.

How to Leave Badenweiler. A Chekhovian story about the death of Chekhov to mark the centenary of the great writer's death. More Anton Chekhov here

Marmalade. An ascerbic look at certain aspects of family life. As Agnes reviews the marmalade recipes her children have given her, they seem to represent something more than filial duty - but what?

Plum's War. "I'm going to have to mention Plum's War on Radio 4, because when it wins awards I need to be covered. Michael Butt's play about P G Wodehouse's notorious broadcasts from Berlin during the war and George Orwell's defence of Wodehouse was funny, sad, serious, pathetic, ingenious and much more. The villain of the piece was not Wodehouse but Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, Orwell's prototype for Big Brother in 1984. Benjamin Whitrow's portrayal of Wodehouse certainly made him out to be a fool but not a traitor." - Sue Arnold, The Observer 11.7.99

The Bridal Suite. Albert has worked in the same seaside hotel for over 50 years. He is a bachelor, but he has had offers, one of which now weighs on his mind. He considers three couples' stories from the bridal suite, as he searches for a way forward.

The Honeybourne Tapes. A hypnotherapist is unable to convince his lover of his profession's value. However, a patient begins to recall past moments in startling and convincing detail.

The Eye of the Day.The Story Of Mata Hari. Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and glamorous WW1 spy, an erotic butterfly who stayed too long at the fin-de-siecle feast.

The Irish Play. A long-forgotten English playwright cashes in on the vogue for Irish drama by resetting his old Essex plays in Kerry.

The Perfect Woman. Jack and Mike are each obsessed with their 'perfect woman', but does such a creature exist? The two men go on a difficult journey to discover the truth.

Albert Speers Walk Around the World. Patrick Malahide stars as Albert Speer or Prisoner Number Five, as he was known throughout his twenty years in Spandau Prison. Michael Butt's play takes us on the imaginary journeys Speer devised to engage his mind and keep him from despair. A sympathetic American guard orders him travel books from the library and he plots his routes methodically. But he can't escape from the demons of guilt about Nazi war crimes. Sometimes the scenes he witnesses on his trips are exhilarating; sometimes the people are seductive but sometimes he is glad to be disturbed by the prison guard yelling for him to get back into his tiny cell where he is forbidden to look out of the window.Of the other six inmates, he is closest to Rudolf Hess (Jack Klaff) who he sees as vulnerable and wants to protect, whereas Admiral Karl Donitz (Nicholas Woodeson) constantly baits him and tries to pull rank with him. Donitz can't forgive Speer for his admission of guilt at the Nuremberg Trials. Speer was Hitler's chief architect and his very efficient Minister for Armaments and War Production. In prison, he is rigorously self-disciplined and sets himself a tough regimen.Prison rules are strict but even as they relax and prisoners start to talk to each other, Speer keeps aloof.To disract himself nine years into his sentence, he designs and creates a garden in the spacious yard of Spandau and is particularly fond of his rockery and flowers. As an architect, he enjoys working out how the great buildings he visits were created and planning his routes so that he when he sets off, he will see and hear and meet the people he has carefully researched.However thoughts come unbidden and there is one judgemental voice in his head that travels everywhere with him.

Medical Detectives
Death In The Parish. When cholera strikes Soho in 1854, the Rev Henry Whitehead calls in the brilliant but mercurial Dr John Snow to investigate.
The Last Infirmity. Two ambitious young doctors tackle yellow fever in 19th century Cuba. With Colin Stinton and William Hope.
The Epping Jaundice. A strange epidemic breaks out among middle-class inhabitants of a quiet Essex suburb. With Bernard Hepton and Roger Allam.
The Stranded Eagle. Years after three explorers died attempting to cross the Arctic, investigators start to piece together events.

A Fire in the West. Ciera Thomas set herself alight outside the Ministry of Defence, apparently in protest at a recent arms deal. There were no warnings, no final farewells. Three years later those left behind, her father, mother, sister, and a former boyfriend, bear witness to a shocking event, as they continue to try to make sense of what happened.

Atomic Lunch. In January 1950 two men meet for lunch in an Oxfordshire pub. One is the Head of Physics at Harwell Research Laboratory. The other is a senior MI5 investigator. One of the most important spy stories of the cold war is about to be revealed.

Comrades. An old man tries to jump off a bridge and fails. During questioning, he recalls a night many years before: a bridge in ethnically-divided India, four soldiers guarding it, bored, tired, frightened. What happened on that hot summer night?

Contemplating Adultery. A factually based story from the book by Lotte and Joseph Hamburger. Sarah Austin, a married and thoroughly respectable Victorian translator, conducts a passionate relationship by letter with a raffish German prince.

Duty. A play to mark the 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death.
Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen fears he may have written his last play, until he receives a mysterious letter from a young woman.

Filthy Rich. Max is set to inherit a small fortune when he turns 25, but standing between him and the money is his sister Katrin. And then there's the grandmother. It's dog-eat-dog on the mean streets of Weston-super-Mare.

Harry in the Underworld. Richard E Grant plays Harry, a novelist who writes large letters on the tree of life. Sadly, no one is buying his tree any more. Harry knows nothing about life itself, and needs to get in touch with the real world if his books are to sell. Then his luck changes. Into his flat walk two actual, hardened criminals.

Looking for Dad. Charlie's attempts at reconciliation with his estranged father are threatened by his wife's fierce but unexplained hostility to a man whom she has only ever met once in her life.

The Babington Plot. Documentary-style drama by Sony Award-winning writer Michael Butt. On its surface, the Babington Plot was a plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne and return England to the Catholic fold. At the centre of the story is the relationship between the "reluctant terrorist" Anthony Babington, whose youthful idealism was not matched by the required conviction, and his co-conspirator, Robert Poley, who persistently encouraged him and became his lover – but was, in fact, a government spy leading Babington to the gallows. Through the eyes of witnesses, listeners can hear the tragic ambiguity of this relationship as it heads towards its final betrayal.

The Piper's Chair. A fast-moving comic double love story to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. The little-known story of the machinations needed to get Mozart to the altar with his beloved Constanze, while at the same time ensuring the equal happiness of Sean, an Irish musician and the maid of the house, Maria. Michael Butt's fast-moving comic double love story to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. The machinations of Irish penny-whistle player Sean Hennessy and his fiddler father eventually lead to married bliss for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Unauthorised History-The Killing of Christopher Marlowe. Our story's focus is on the underside of Elizabethan politics, not the glittering propagandist surface. It's a play about Marlowe, but Marlowe is never in it.
The Story: The scene is Deptford on 30th May 1593.Four gentlemen enter a tavern. They order lunch, take a room above the public bar, and ask for privacy. The afternoon passes uneventfully: every now and then drinks are called for, but otherwise the landlady hears almost nothing, bar the creaking of floorboards, from the company upstairs .On the surface there is nothing remarkable about any of this, that is until the eighth hour passes. As the last stages of sunlight are reflected across the Thames, the hush is pierced - a cry is heard, the door thrown open, a man is dead. The official story was that a fight resulted after an argument regarding the bill. But just scratch the surface of this meeting at Deptford and you find yourself in the company of sharks and spies. hey all dealt in the perennial currency of that day: bargains, tricks, betrayals, lies. Their paths intersect, part, and join again. It is no surprise to find them together in Deptford. The puzzling thing is the presence of the fourth man. What was their business with Christopher Marlowe?
Our narrator opens the play whilst crouching next to the dead body, which is now growing cold. Over the next 45 minutes he speaks to the people who knew Marlowe and enters a world of half-truths and outright lies, as he tries to elicit answers that will finally lead to the truth.

The Judgement Test. Officers in the armed units of the Police have a dangerous job - both physically and psychologically. We ask them to face death and to make life and death decisions. But when it comes to the crunch, what kind of decisions does Constable John Woolf make? And how are they affecting him? In Michael Butt's play, a probing journalist asks some difficult questions and gets some very unexpected answers.

After the Affair. This innovative play dissects the complex and messy world of an extra marital affair with all its exaggerated highs and lows. Two couples are left facing a future they hadn't anticipated, and since Sarah and Janey are sisters, the sense of betrayal runs deep.