Petrified

Petrified is a horror audio drama anthology rooted in Ireland, and each episode is a sealed, standalone story with its own characters and its own bad end. Episodes open with a short spoken ident naming the story, drop straight into scene, and close on credits for the cast and crew. The setups start ordinary. In 'The Unenvied Throne', a son works through his dying mother's final requests in the dark family house while she talks to him by phone from a hospice, and those requests escalate toward arson. 'Imperial Vermilion' sends two psychic investigators, Mila and Linley, into a shuttered hotel where Hazel, who invited them, still comes to clean every day and knows exactly how many guests died there. 'Little Capricorn' leaves a widowed mother and her feverish son at the mercy of a visitor who arrives offering to help sew Nativity costumes. 'Claque' follows a reporter, Hannah Taylor, recording calls about a touring stage show that leaves its audiences shaken. Read as a run, the premises circle a handful of persistent subjects. Christmas customs come up again and again, from the 12 Pubs of Christmas to a school Nativity to a village mummers' night. Religious faith surfaces in nuns on a pilgrimage and journalists confronting a possible miracle, and psychics, cold readings and grand houses with something wrong at their centre recur as well. Irish texture runs through it all, from wren boys and Stephen's Day to an Irish dancing competition and a crew of Irish lads working illegally in the US. The scripts also carry a streak of black comedy. A mother and son snipe at each other like an old double act while discussing her death, and a would-be romance in 'Gratitude Is In The Now' runs on teasing banter right up to its grisly ritual. The laughs make the turns land harder. Peter Dunne writes and directs every episode, and Liam Geraghty produces, edits and designs the sound. A behind-the-scenes documentary, 'You’re Listening To', hosted by Amy O'Dwyer and Margaret McAuliffe, includes interviews with both men and notes Geraghty's preference for recording small domestic sounds, like footsteps, himself rather than relying on sound libraries. It also folds its making-of material into a mock-sinister frame of its own, and because it contains spoilers it works best after a few of the dramas. The casting draws on a recurring company, with Margaret McAuliffe, Donncha O'Dea, Michelle McMahon, Anna Sheils-McNamee, Deirdre Monaghan and Amy O'Dwyer turning up in different roles. Guest performers appear too, including David Dastmalchian as Wesley in 'Claque', Dylan Baker as George in 'The Unenvied Throne' and Larry Fessenden in 'Cold Reading'. Some episodes, among them 'Melody's Story Hour' and 'Georgie', were recorded live in front of an audience, and a 'Q&A' episode captures an audience discussion after a festival performance. The violence is explicit and the subject matter dark: suicide, self-harm, mutilation and threats against a child all feature.